Italian transfer window shuts on Friday 7pm UK time; follow Deadline Day on Sky Sports News and Sky Sports digital platforms
Thursday 30 January 2020 13:07, UK
“My dream is an international Deadline Day event, held by a different city each year, with an aligned transfer deadline for everyone and hosting all the representatives of the most important clubs in the world. Just to be a little bit more obsessed about Deadline Day altogether."
For the son of a top-flight football manager turned transfer expert, nurtured by the footballing world from his very early days, nothing is too hard to imagine. Not even the most bizarre loan move, or the quirkiest transfer scenario.
Gianluca Di Marzio is exactly that. Not the name of an online newspaper, like some seem to mistakenly think, but a man with an ever-ringing mobile phone constantly clenched between his hands: the Italian epicentre of transfer market reporting.
Gianluca's father Gianni was a football all-rounder: he played as a midfielder until an injury forced him into retirement, then became a Serie A head coach at Napoli, Catania and Catanzaro, and developed into a sporting director, TV pundit and club advisor.
And - last but not least - he was a scout who could spot groundbreaking talent; for example when he almost brought a 17-year-old Diego Armando Maradona straight to Naples after spotting him on a pitch in the Buenos Aires suburbs ahead of the 1978 World Cup.
"When I was a kid, I followed my father at training, in the changing room, on the team bus, I was training with his players, so I got to see the whole mechanism that rotated around football," says Di Marzio.
"For me, it was like being in Disneyland. I realised straight away I wasn't good enough to make it as a player, I didn't want to chase a dream that I wouldn't have realised. But I had a way with words, I liked writing, I was curious, so from there the football and journalism combo was ever-present.
"My father then took up a sporting director role and I followed him in the hotels where he dealt with other clubs, so I met a lot of people there. Then I started being a fully-fledged journalist at Sky.
"When I was 30, I was first sent to report on the transfer market, shadowing a colleague in Milan. When she saw that everybody was greeting me and talking to me because they remembered me fondly from the days I was following my father, she asked me 'what the hell am I doing here, if you're clearly more comfortable than I am?'.
"I started developing a passion for transfer stories, and it became a real obsession."
Now, Di Marzio has established himself as an actual brand, covering Sky in Italy's transfer stories and breaking scoops on - but not limited to - Italian soil.
Thankfully, there is a wide slice of public sharing the same obsession as him.
"Football fans are so obsessed with the transfer market that they almost put it on a par with football games," he says. "I know it's absurd because you're waiting for the game to see your players scoring goals.
"But the transfer rumours, targets, deals that go through or collapse create an adrenaline in football fans that is almost comparable to what you feel when your team scores a goal."
In Italy, clubs across the football pyramid retain an official headquarter when it comes to Deadline Day, and that is a hotel in the country's economic hub Milan which has varied throughout the years - from the iconic Hotel Sheraton to the more recent Meliá.
Sporting directors, agents and club officers attend what is a big, modern fair of the Italian transfer market, and have the opportunity to start sketching out transfer talks and strategies face-to-face without the need to pick up the phone or jump on a train.
Of course, transfer reporters occupy a big part of the discourse, as they are able to witness first-hand what potential moves are starting to materialise.
Apart from the big hall hosting most of the visitors, there are press boxes, meeting suites, and a few other rooms dedicated to the Italian FA where the paperwork is completed and handed in - secluded by two big doors which are promptly closed when the clock strikes the deadline time, signalling the end of the window and a 'stop' to all transfer talks.
"The Italian transfer deadline day is a sort of Big Brother, a big spectacle of the transfer window," Di Marzio says. "It only happens in Italy, it's a tradition to have these appointments in a single hotel where every club representative can meet.
"Once, there was a representative for every professional club in Italy, and everyone had an assigned box donning their club crest, with landlines and fax machines like it was a fair, to facilitate meetings between agents and finalise deals as quickly as possible.
"Now with new technology and e-mails everything is easier, you don't need a paper contract to send through, but it remains a very well-followed event that works on television."
Manchester City boss Pep Guardiola could have anticipated his record-breaking Premier League season by three or four years had he arrived at the Etihad in 2013.
It was widely expected for him to arrive in Manchester following his departure from Barcelona and a sabbatical spent in New York, if it wasn't for Di Marzio bursting the social media bubble.
"That's the transfer story that I remember most dearly," he says. "I broke the news in March that Guardiola would have gone to Bayern, creating a tilt in the media.
"Jupp Heynckes had Bayern on course for a treble, and the club were forced to deny the rumours with an official statement. But after 48 hours we forced them to announce that Guardiola was joining the club.
"It was an arm-wrestle, the news caught on such a massive scale and it couldn't be denied anymore. A lot of journalists didn't believe me and then subsequently called me to apologise, it was the first time my name started to be well-recognised on the international stage."
After 15 years in the transfer business, one thing that does bother Di Marzio is the lack of education when it comes to the vocabulary of transfer reporting and the expectation it creates in football fans.
"I would like people to be educated about the language used in transfer stories to make them understand how the process works!", he says.
"I often send this message in Italy, but I would also like users and followers in England to understand it too. Saying a club 'has made an enquiry, 'is interested, 'in talks', 'is close' to sign a player, does not mean that he will 100 per cent sign with that club.
"There are a lot of phases in transfer talks, and so many details that can make deals collapse nowadays, even after medicals when players have already posed for pictures with club scarves and such."
Sky Sports News - channel 409 - will bring you breaking news, reaction and analysis throughout the day from reporters at grounds across the country and big-name studio guests.
Our comprehensive Transfer Centre blog will bring you all the latest news and developments across the leagues from 6am, while we'll take you live to the newsroom by streaming more than four hours of Sky Sports News' Deadline Day coverage.
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