6 Serie A stars from 2005-06 we can’t believe are still playing today
The 2005-06 Serie A season will forever be remembered for the Calciopoli scandal, which resulted in reigning champions Juventus getting relegated.
Italy went on to lift the World Cup that summer, with all 23 members of Marcello Lippi’s playing their football in Serie A at the time, while notable foreign imports included the likes of David Trezeguet, Andriy Shevchenko and Zlatan Ibrahimovic.
Here are six players from the 2005-06 Serie A campaign we can’t believe are still playing today.
Cristian Zapata
Udinese signed the Colombian centre-back from Deportivo Cali way back in 2005, when he was just 18.
In classic Serie A fashion, the Bianconeri cycled through four coaches that season as they went on to finish 11th. The teenage Zapata made 21 league appearances that year and shared a dressing room with the likes of Sulley Muntari, Antonio Di Natale and… Al-Saadi Gadafi, son of Muammar Gaddafi. Gulp.
Zapata went on to make over 300 appearances in the Italian top flight for Udinese, AC Milan and Genoa but he didn’t win a major trophy until his late thirties, the Superliga Colombiana with Atletico Nacional in 2023.
He’s still going back in Colombia at the age of 38, having joined Atletico Bucaramanga last year.
Fernando Tissone
Another young South American prospect in that eclectic Udinese squad, Tissone played 26 Serie A matches that year before moving on to Atalanta.
The Argentinian midfielder spent eight years in the Italian game, briefly returning to Udinese before a more settled stint at Sampdoria. The latter half of his career has been the classic journeyman path, with stamps in his passport including Spain (Mallorca and Malaga), Ukraine (Karpaty Lviv) and Portugal (Desportivo Aves and Nacional) before eventually returning to Italy for a series of lower league clubs – Taranto, Paganese, Budoni and (currently) Sangiustese.
Sangiustese compete in the Eccellenza, which is the fifth tier of Italian football.
Marco Rossi
No, not the 1990s Brescia and Sampdoria cult hero. That Marco Rossi retired back in 2000 and is currently in charge of the Hungary national team.
This Marco Rossi broke through to make 10 Serie A appearances for his boyhood club Parma in 2005-06, and even scored in a 2-1 win over Chievo.
But he never quite kicked on to make himself a mainstay of the Italian top flight and inside has earned his living in relative anonymity, representing a whole host of lesser-known clubs in the lower reaches of the Italian football pyramid with a two-year stint at Australian A-League outfit Wellington Phoenix somewhere along the way.
Aged 37, he’s still turning out for Sicilian outfit Akragas in Serie D.
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Aleandro Rosi
Born and raised in Rome, Rosi developed his skills in both Lazio and Roma’s academies before getting his big break with the latter in 2005.
The right-back made 15 appearances for Luciano Spalletti’s Giallorossi in 2005-06 as they finished fifth in the Serie A table, eventually bumped up to 2nd following the unpleasantness (we’ll call it diplomatically).
Rosi never represented Italy at international level but spent his entire club career in his home country, going on to play for Parma, Genoa, Fiorentina and many others after departing his hometown club in 2023.
Nowadays the 37-year-old is turning out for Serie C side Torres.
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Lorenzo De Silvestri
Unlike the lower league journeymen that make up the bulk of the rest of this, veteran right-back De Silvestri is still playing Serie A football for Bologna at the age of 36. Unfortunately he didn’t make it into their Champions League squad, though.
Technically speaking, he didn’t actually make any appearances in the 2005-06 Serie A campaign. But he did make Lazio’s bench as a teenager on a handful of occasions and played minutes in both the Coppa Italia and Intertoto Cup.
Marco Zamboni
Now we’re going back a bit.
Zamboni made his Serie A debut all the way back in 1997 for Marcelo Lippi’s Juventus and had already turned out for Napoli, Chievo, Lecce, Udinese, Modena, Verona and Napoli (again) – phew – by the time he made it to Reggina in the mid-noughties.
We’ll give it to you straight if you’re sat there trying to work out how old that makes him: Zamboni is forty-seven(!) years of age.
Unfortunately he’s not actually playing professionally, and judging by the spate of clubs that don’t have Wikipedia pages on his career path section, he hasn’t for at least a decade.
But he is still turning out for amateur side Pedemonte as he approaches his sixth decade. Love to see it.