January 10, 1999, was a busy day in football.
While Mason Mount was born in Portsmouth, 600 miles south Inter Milan’s mesmerising attacking trio of Ronaldo, Ivan Zamorano and Roberto Baggio were putting Venezia to the sword in a thumping 6-2 Serie A win at the San Siro.
Chilean forward Zamorano presumably celebrated his hat-trick in one of Milan’s bustling nightclubs that evening, perhaps treating Ronaldo to a Negroni sbagliato or two in return for assisting the first of his treble with a flurry of stepovers, but had he instead chosen to stay at home for a night in front of the box he would have witnessed television history in the making.
As Mount was struggling to take his first uneasy steps in the world, over on American television network HBO a New Jersey mobster was finding it equally tricky keeping his balance.
January 10, 1999, brought the world Mount, a bullish Zamorano hat-trick and the pilot of The Sopranos, in which mob boss Tony Soprano is forced to visit a psychiatrist after collapsing at a family BBQ.
While that might not sound like a particularly alluring opener, David Chase’s creation spawned 86 episodes of arguably the greatest TV series ever, with all due respect to The Wire, Breaking Bad and Footballers’ Wives. Fast-forward 22 years and, like every kit Gabriel Batistuta adorned at Fiorentina, The Sopranos effortlessly thrives among a modern landscape.
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