Napoli's Top-10 All-Time Leading GoalScorers

#10 - Giuseppe Savoldi, 77 Goals | 1975-1979

Giuseppe Savoldi

Before Diego Maradona, there was a certain Giuseppe Savoldi.

Truth be told, it was with Bologna that the king of Bergamo played his finest football, scoring 140 goals in over 200 appearances, and inspiring two Coppa Italia triumphs in his remarkable seven-year spell with La Dotta. He also won the 1973/74 Capocannoniere with 17 league goals.

Nevertheless, Napoli did get to enjoy some of that electrifying brilliance in front of goal, and in his two-year sojourn through the Stadio San Paolo, Giuseppe Savoldi registered 77 goals in 165 appearances for Gli Azzurri, making him the 10th highest goalscorer in Napoli history.

“There are moments in football that are exclusively poetic: these are the moments of the “goal.” Each goal is always an invention, it is always a subversion of the code: each goal is an inevitability, shock, awe, irreversibility. Just like the word poetic. The top scorer of the league is always the best poet of the year. Right now it is Savoldi.”

– January 3, 1972, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Italian poet, writer.

In the late 60s, Savoldi had a reputation as one of Italian football's rising stars, and to a large extent, the Gorlago native lived up to expectations. His transfer from Bologna to Napoli in 1975 is recorded in history as the first ever million-pound deal (£1.2 million) -a then world record fee.

If Napoli were willing to pay that much, Savoldi's goal tally proves he was definitely worth every penny.