When a bonafide Premier League icon like Gianfranco Zola is talking up your ability to produce something ‘special’ – as he did with a certain West Ham United cult hero – that is lofty praise indeed.
The Hammers have a long and proud history when it comes to giving homes to mercurial talents and madcap mavericks.
Harry Redknapp hit the jackpot with Paolo di Canio after taking ‘a gamble’ on the West Ham United legend. Carlos Tevez saved Alan Curbishley’s Hammers from relegation. Dimitri Payet, Manuel Lanzini, Ravel Morrison, Andy Carroll, Mohammed Kudus produced some of the most mesmerising football of their careers too, in claret and blue.
So it is hard to think of a Premier League club better suited to harnessing the capricious talents of the appropriately-named Alessandro Diamanti. The eternal rough diamond who, while spending only 12 months in English football, left a lasting impression on the West Ham supporters.
Alessandro Diamanti opens up on his West Ham United exit
There were fizzing free-kicks, controversial penalties, and performances which ranged from the anonymous to the awesome.
He would even finish as runner-up to Scott Parker in the 2010 Hammer of the Year polls.
Speaking to Italian publication Fanpage a decade-and-a-half later, it is clear that the affection many West Ham fans hold for Diamanti is reciprocated by the 42-year-old Italian himself.
In fact, if he could turn back the clock, a man who went on to become an icon of the Australian A-League before retiring as recently as 2023 would change only one thing about his time at Upton Park.
“When I went to England, I was a kid. I’d never been out of Italy, just a kid in London,” Diamanti says. “I struggled for the first two or three months. Then, once I settled in the dressing room, I did better on the pitch too.
“I struggled a lot with the language. I didn’t know anything about English. The English don’t like it if you don’t speak it, unlike Australians! At the end of the first interview I did in Australia, the journalist told me not to learn English because he liked Italian-English!
“I have no regrets,” says the former Atalanta, Bologna and Guangzhou Evergrande schemer. “But if I had to find a needle in a haystack, my only small regret would be leaving West Ham too early.
“I’d had a fantastic year. I was in the fans’ hearts, and perhaps I should have continued my journey there. But the hardest thing in life is making choices. It’s easy to live and play with the mindset you have ten years later.”
Diamanti loved playing under Italian icon Gianfranco Zola at Upton Park
West Ham signed Diamanti for £6 million in the summer of 2009. Per BBC Sport, they sold him to Brescia just one year and seven Premier League goals later, for a vastly-reduced fee of just £2.2 million.
While the likes of Julian Faubert and Winston Reid do not reflect fondly on the disastrous reign of Avram Grant, Diamanti is another who would rue the appointment of the sour-faced former Chelsea gaffer.
In contrast, as a fellow Italian and another who took pride in putting the ‘beautiful’ in the ‘beautiful game’, Diamanti relished his time under Grant’s predecessor, the legendary Gianfranco Zola.
“Having the chance to play in the Premier League was the opportunity of a lifetime,” Diamanti told the official West Ham website a couple of years ago, shortly after hanging up his boots at the Melbourne-based Western United.
“I knew all about the club and its supporters and, of course, one of our greatest-ever Italian footballers, Gianfranco Zola, was the manager.
“It was a good feeling to know that he wanted me to play for him and I can remember being 100 per cent excited at the possibility coming to London, even though I realised it would take two or three months to adjust.
“The East End was a beautiful place and it was a dream to play at the Boleyn Ground, where every match proved an emotional experience. Hopefully, the Hammers supporters enjoyed everything I tried to do for them during my year with the club.”
Rest assured, Alessandro, they most certainly did.
