Luciano Vassalo
Luciano Vassalo was born in Asmara, Eritrea on August 15th, 1935 and is the Soccer Player. At the age of 88, Luciano Vassalo biography, profession, age, height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, measurements, education, career, dating/affair, family, news updates, and networth are available.
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Luciano Vassalo, (born in Asmara, Eritrea), is a former Ethiopian footballer of Eritrean and Italian origins.
He is known for his intelligence, but mainly for his volleys, free kicks, and penalties.
He and his brother Italo played professionally with Saint-George SA.
Early life
Luciano was born in Asmara to Vittorio Vassallo, an Italian rifleman, and Mebrak Abraham, an Eritrean woman. Vittorio was moved to Addis Ababa in 1937 and his family never heard from him again. Children of mixed-race were marginalized in school and treated with contempt because of Italy's racial laws. Luciano was forced to drop out of school in the third grade and study as a mechanic at a railway workshop.
Luciano first started playing football for Stella Asmarina, a Viarage Apostolic team created solely for Italo-Eritreans children. He started his football career as a left-back before being moved to center back and then onto midfield, where he became known as a versatile playmaker with a strong shot.
Club career
Luciano was a member of GS Gejeret and GS Asmara, an Ethiopian team, as Eritrea had been annexed in 1950. During his time at GS Asmara, the federation purposefully prevented the team from winning the Ethiopian First Division. However, GS Asmara managed to humiliate the Ethiopian national team in a friendly match during the 1959 Africa Cup of Nations.
He signed up for Cotton Factory Club in Dire Dawa in 1960, where he and his half-brother won the Ethiopian First Division in 1960, 1962, 1963, and 1965. Luciano credited his education as a mechanic for his acceptance of a job at the associated cotton plantation, which allowed him to receive a wage ten times higher than that of a normal worker.
International career
Luciano was a member of Ethiopia's national team in the qualifying rounds of the 1962 FIFA World Cup. Luciano, half-brother Italo, was born in 1962, when Ethiopia gained their first trophy to date. He was told to change his first and last names in order to appear as a genuine Ethiopian, but he declined. Luciano, the team's captain, scored two goals in the semifinal against Tunisia and was tied for third highest scorer in the tournament, and the first Ethiopian to receive the coveted prize. Despite an attempt to exclude him from the captaincy in order to encourage an Ethiopian player to lift the trophy, His Highness Haile Selassie presented him with the award.
CAF's selection for the best African footballer in the last fifty years began in 2006. Luciano and his legendary teammate and friend Mengistu Worku were selected in the top 50 players as the sole Ethiopians in the top 50, but they were not chosen in the final 30, where Roger Milla was ranked number one. Many regard Vassallo as the best Ethiopian footballer in history, following Worku and Ydnekatchew Tessema.
Managerial career
Vassallo then went to study as a coach at Coverciano in Florence, Italy. He has served on several occasions as a coach for Ethiopia's national team.
Luciano Vassallo was arrested during the Red Terror after he condemned the use of the amphetamine Captagon being used by the Ethiopian national team. He was furious that he was supposed to be arrested by Mengistu Haile Mariam's troops, but one of the colonels acknowledged his footballing hero and allowed him to go.
He was reinstated as the national team manager in 1978, but two weeks after a historic victory over East Germany, he escaped to Djibouti then Rome, where he had sent his family's to safety some months before.