Brilliant footballers, outstanding teams and utter domination of European club competition: Italian football reached its heady peak during the early 1990s and the watching world thrilled to the unrivalled exoticism of Serie A. The Italian game produced many great stories during these years and one of the more unheralded ones was the challenge to the balance of power held by the traditional two-club football cities of Milan, Turin and Rome. That challenge came from Liguria in the north west of the country and for a brief time the port city of Genoa put forward a strong claim for the right to be called the country’s capital of calcio.

The exploits of Sampdoria during these years are well known. What had historically been a modest club came to wider prominence for the first time during the 1980s thanks to canny management and clever recruitment of promising young Italian talent. A wonderful team featuring players like Vialli, Mancini, Lombardo, Mannini, Pagliuca and Vierchwod came together to bring Coppa Italia and European Cup Winners Cup success to the city.

The sudden reemergence of the city’s other major club at the beginning of the 1990s was an unlikely story too, despite that club’s storied past. Genoa Cricket and Football Club is the oldest active professional football club in the country and had been one of the most prominent teams in the early days of the Italian game, winning nine titles between 1898 and 1924. The intervening decades had not been at all kind and Genoa’s modern history was beset by truculent owners, perpetual financial crises and a half-life existence spent mostly mired in Serie B – interspersed with the occasional sojourn down into the footballing graveyard of Serie C.

The catalyst for an upturn in fortunes came with yet another new owner in Aldo Spinelli who arrived in 1985 with a mission to bring much-needed stability. The pay-off came in 1989 as this famous old club won promotion to Serie A after a decade away. That first season back brought varied fortunes despite a comfortable 11th placed finish. A trio of Uruguayans were recruited for the campaign; two of them, Ruben Paz and Jose Perdomo, flopped badly but that third import was the esteemed striker Carlos Aguilera and his name would loom large in the modern history of the club.

Suffering a poor working relationship with his coach, Spinelli made what would prove to be an inspired change at the helm. Out went the architect of Genoa’s promotion, Franco Scoglio, and in his place came Osvaldo Bagnoli, the wily and respected coach who had taken unfashionable Verona to the most unlikely of scudetto wins six years earlier.

With no obvious star names in their line up, Genoa was an ideal platform for Bagnoli, a coach with a masterful reputation for putting together disciplined, well-balanced teams and extracting the very best from players of modest ability but driven personalities. Two bargain acquisitions made in that summer’s transfer market would transform the squad: out went previous season’s top scorer David Fontolan expensively to Inter to be replaced by the huge, and hugely more effective Czech World Cup striker Tomas Skuhravy.

The newcomer partnered with Aguilera to form one of the most devastating big man – small man front pairings of the modern era. Skuhravy was a colossus of a man and a nightmarish opponent for opposing defenders who blanched in the face of his raw power and his perpetual willingness to impose it upon them. The very differently-styled Aguilera was a quick and agile foil who feasted gleefully on the knockdowns that came his way. The other new import was Brazilian left-back Branco who added experience and a devastating ability at set pieces.

Genoa proved to be one of the revelations of the 1990-91 season and a final round 2-0 win at home against Juventus took them clear of both the Turin giants and their neighbours Torino into fourth place in Serie A, representing a highest Serie A finish since 1939. Overachievement was infectious locally with neighbours Samp simultaneously edging out the Milan clubs to win its one and only championship. Skuhravy and Aguilera matched each other goal for goal and completed the season tied on 15 Serie A strikes apiece, but while the forwards attracted most of the attention this was a success built on hard graft and an unerring togetherness throughout the team.

Keeper Simone Braglia was typical of the sort of player that characterised this side, one who had led a journeyman career while maintaining resolute professionalism and ambition should an opportunity in the big time ever present itself. Vincenzo Torrente was Genoa’s ferocious man-marking right back from the lower leagues; Gianluca Signorini the rearguard’s authoritative and muscular sweeper; Stefanio Eranio was the classy Rolls-Royce midfielder who dictated play and was a product of the club’s youth ranks; what Roberto Onorati lacked in pace on the left, he more than made up for with vision and passing range to link with Branco; Gennaro Ruotolo brought a dynamic presence as a box-to-box midfielder.

Two other members of the squad cast off rejection from bigger clubs to reconstruct their careers in this humble Genoa team. Midfield engine Mario Bortolazzi had been a fringe member of Milan’s 1988 title winning squad but was sold that very same summer, while reserve forward Marco Pacione was hounded out of Juventus after carrying the can for the club’s 1986 European Cup elimination by Barcelona.

With a first-ever appearance in European football to look forward to, Spinelli was determined to keep his squad together and turned down sizeable offers for the quartet of Eranio, Ruotolo, Skuhravy and Torrente. Genoa took quickly to the European arena and progressed all the way to the semi-finals of the 1991-92 UEFA Cup before being eliminated by Ajax, but those extra fixtures came at a cost with League form dipping ominously and bringing a precariously low fourteenth-placed finish.

The spell was broken and Spinelli was ready to cash in on his saleable assets. Bagnoli quit to look after his ill daughter and during the summer of 1992 his sagely assembled team started to break up. Eranio finally made his move to long-term suitors Milan and Carlos Aguilera signed for Torino. Replacements like John Van’t Schip, Kazzy Miura and Igor Dobrovolski proved sub-standard and a dependency on Skuhravy’s goals was just enough to keep Genoa above the relegation zone in its centenary year.

The same pattern followed in the 1993-94 season with outstanding youngsters Andrea Fortunato and Christian Panucci moving on to Juventus and Milan respectively and not coming close to being adequately replaced. Ultimately, even the ever-dependable goal scoring exploits of Skuhravy couldn’t save the club forever and Genoa finally succumbed to relegation in 1995. Four seasons later their city rivals Sampdoria followed them down. The traditional axis of the Milan, Turin and Rome two-club Italian cities was restored and is unlikely to be threatened again.