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Bonetti era at Dundee


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Had a read of this article on the Guardian earlier:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2018/jan/18/the-forgotten-story-of-when-diego-maradona-signed-for-dundee

Just thought it would be cool to get some Dundee fans to write about their memories of this time period. Who were the best players? Who were the duds? Best performances? Did any of the guys really get involved with the city or who played one game and was never seen again?

 

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19 minutes ago, Poet of the Macabre said:

Had a read of this article on the Guardian earlier:

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2018/jan/18/the-forgotten-story-of-when-diego-maradona-signed-for-dundee

Just thought it would be cool to get some Dundee fans to write about their memories of this time period. Who were the best players? Who were the duds? Best performances? Did any of the guys really get involved with the city or who played one game and was never seen again?

 

It's one of the best times I've ever had supporting my club. A lot of the players did get involved with the club and still continue to be involved in various events etc. We had built a squad that in my opinion, should have been challenging for the title but were woefully mismanaged. Bonetti would regularly miss games to go on holiday mid-way throughout the season, he built up a 100k pizza bill and didn't have the first clue about tactics. There was a stat that if games were shortened to 80 minutes per game (Taking away the first 5 minutes and the last 5 minutes of each game) we'd have won the league. I don't know how true that stat may be, but regardless of its validity, it highlighted how poor the Bonetti's were at managing games. If fans think that McCann is a permanent seether, then one just needs to look at the Bonetti's who were constantly frothing. It was in an after dinner speech, and I don't know why more wasn't made of it at the time, but Willie Young came out and said he and the rest of the refs used to actively enjoy giving decisions against Dundee as they had a dislike for the Bonetti's.

The worst moment was the Arabs breaking Cabalerro in half and leaving him out for almost a year (To which he never came back the same player) and Alex Smith acting like utter scum in his post match interview said something along the lines of, 'I'd be surprised if he's not starting the next game, those foreign players like to roll around'.

We had talent like Caniggia, Cabalerro, Nemsadze (Still by a considerable distance the best player I've ever seen at Dundee), Sara, Speroni and Carranza. Now this wasn't a period like many other Scottish clubs had been through, in that we signed a large amount of players on massive wages that no-one had heard of - We signed some genuine top class players. Nemsadze was the Georgian international captain, Carranza had been capped by Argentina, we signed Cabalerro from Arsenal and the signing of Caniggia would be like signing Xavi tomorrow (In terms of the bat shit craziness of it). Of course, we did sign a whole host of duds too and they generally outweighed the top class talent we had. The likes of Marco Roccatti, Umberto Fatello, Alessandro Romano and Chris Coyne made extremely minimal impact during their time at Dens and cost us a whole wad of cash. Roccatti for example, despite only being a loan deal, insisted on us signing his own personal goalkeeping coach from Italy as well.

Was it worth it? Obviously not, the lack of success we had was embarrassing for the quality we had and it very nearly killed my club. Would I want Dundee to do it again? Again, absolutely not for the aforementioned reasons. Will I cherish watching some of the best players I've ever seen strut their stuff at Dens for a season and a bit? 100%. I won't lie and say I hated the Bonetti era, because any Dundee fan that's talking in anything but retrospect I'd call a liar. It was an amazing time, which never amounted to anything other than nearly putting us to the wall, but I enjoyed it until the very last second.

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1 hour ago, G_Man1985 said:

Wouldn't be Dundee...

Kinda like when rangers died.

I'd do it all again. Here we are still going in the top flight ( just) while our city rivals are a league below

I remember being at the airport and being told we were 24 million in debt. A day earlier we were beside the Marr brothers in the city centre of Perugia

Albania was also tremendous. Cheap as f**k and the most stunning women on the planet. 

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Nemsadze was absolute class, seeing Caniggia open the scoring in a Dundee derby was just utterly surreal. We were awful in terms of discipline, I remember one terminally stupid red card for DeMarchi which cost us a cup tie against Hearts.

 

My main memory of the Bonettis was the utter seethe they brought out in Sandy Clark. He hated them. He even wrote a Sunday Mail article dedicating several paragraphs to Dario Bonetti wearing Doc Martens.

 

The whole thing was mental, even post admin. I got involved in the first handful Dee4life meetings immediately following admin, and it came as no surprise that George Knight later made such a c**t of it as the fans rep on the board.

 

Impossible to pick a single highlight, but 4500 Dundee fans chanting "You fat b*****d" in unison at Charlie Miller following him losing it in a Tannadice derby would be in the top 5.

 

 

 

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It's one of the best times I've ever had supporting my club. A lot of the players did get involved with the club and still continue to be involved in various events etc. We had built a squad that in my opinion, should have been challenging for the title but were woefully mismanaged. Bonetti would regularly miss games to go on holiday mid-way throughout the season, he built up a 100k pizza bill and didn't have the first clue about tactics. There was a stat that if games were shortened to 80 minutes per game (Taking away the first 5 minutes and the last 5 minutes of each game) we'd have won the league. I don't know how true that stat may be, but regardless of its validity, it highlighted how poor the Bonetti's were at managing games. If fans think that McCann is a permanent seether, then one just needs to look at the Bonetti's who were constantly frothing. It was in an after dinner speech, and I don't know why more wasn't made of it at the time, but Willie Young came out and said he and the rest of the refs used to actively enjoy giving decisions against Dundee as they had a dislike for the Bonetti's.
The worst moment was the Arabs breaking Cabalerro in half and leaving him out for almost a year (To which he never came back the same player) and Alex Smith acting like utter scum in his post match interview said something along the lines of, 'I'd be surprised if he's not starting the next game, those foreign players like to roll around'.
We had talent like Caniggia, Cabalerro, Nemsadze (Still by a considerable distance the best player I've ever seen at Dundee), Sara, Speroni and Carranza. Now this wasn't a period like many other Scottish clubs had been through, in that we signed a large amount of players on massive wages that no-one had heard of - We signed some genuine top class players. Nemsadze was the Georgian international captain, Carranza had been capped by Argentina, we signed Cabalerro from Arsenal and the signing of Caniggia would be like signing Xavi tomorrow (In terms of the bat shit craziness of it). Of course, we did sign a whole host of duds too and they generally outweighed the top class talent we had. The likes of Marco Roccatti, Umberto Fatello, Alessandro Romano and Chris Coyne made extremely minimal impact during their time at Dens and cost us a whole wad of cash. Roccatti for example, despite only being a loan deal, insisted on us signing his own personal goalkeeping coach from Italy as well.
Was it worth it? Obviously not, the lack of success we had was embarrassing for the quality we had and it very nearly killed my club. Would I want Dundee to do it again? Again, absolutely not for the aforementioned reasons. Will I cherish watching some of the best players I've ever seen strut their stuff at Dens for a season and a bit? 100%. I won't lie and say I hated the Bonetti era, because any Dundee fan that's talking in anything but retrospect I'd call a liar. It was an amazing time, which never amounted to anything other than nearly putting us to the wall, but I enjoyed it until the very last second.

Well summed up. The Cabalerro bit sticks in my throat still. Something similar happened with Hernandez at Tannadice and Smith came out with the same pish. I was annoyed and Stella Artoised enough to phone Jim Traynor up and complain.
The first game they lost at Easter Rd was the start of the season in s nutshell. McLeish going on about refs being strong and then letting Matthias Jack out without his muzzle.
Cabalerro of course given his marching orders for retaliation after Jack had run 30 yards to make his “challenge.”
Bonetti said it was only a matter of time before the treatment he was getting ended with him seriously injured and so it proved.
It was a harebrained scheme in hindsight, but they were certainly unlucky that the two most saleable assets got injured. If they’d flogged Cabalerro and Zurab for what they expected to it might have gone on a bit longer, but I imagine it would still eventually have collapsed.
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Zurab Khizanishvili (yes I spelled that without checking) was my favourite player of that era. I mean, I was about 10 and only favoured him as I felt sorry for him wearing no.13, but still.

zurab-khizanishvili-dundee-picture-id681

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Gave Dundee fans memories they'll never forget, I bet they tell their kids about that fifth placed finish and lost Cup Final to this day.

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I remember walking home from the pub the week before the game against Hibs (3rd or 4th of season??), meeting a few Hibs fans and singing "We're top of the league and you're no" at them. They were on a high too and it felt like a real sea-change; two teams who were willing and capable of challenging the Bigot Brothers.

 

Unfortunately, the Bonettis really weren't good managers. They almost dismissed the cups, when we would have had real potential for winning something, and players came and went without little planning being apparent. If Caballero had been allowed to complete a full season without his injury, we could really have had something special in terms of on the park results, not just publicity. (Admittedly, we might not have signed CC33 if Cab wasn't crocked). My favourite player was actually Temuri - total bald, Georgian legend, but Nemsadze, Zurab, Sara, Cab, CC33, Speroni & Artero remain some of the finest players I've seen in dark blue. Carranza was the one player that I really felt should have produced more, but we never really saw anything from him.

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I do. Sadly.

Don't have much else other than that since supporting them.

Now I have my son asking me ( he is 6) if we will ever win a home game. :-(.


I didn’t even know we we’d become huddlers.
I get to Dens as late as possible now.

And stay to the very end to avoid everyone leaving.
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that was a crazy time following Dundee. seemed to be a new story in the papers, not always good, everyday. we got to see some amazing talent and an equal amount of shite! i r3member being at tge dunfermiline game,sure we won 3-0, and my uncle turning to me and saying "wheres the money coming from?" but i was 12 and didnt care less!

must say nemsadze was the most talented player ive seen at dens. Artero waas close but nemsadze was my favourite. the man was just sheer class!

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