Fortunately, the club’s former secretary, Christian Bartosch, has an elephant’s memory. “I had forgotten his name but I remember an Italian striker who came. A tall, lanky one. He had not managed to find a place in the team and had left home after a few months. It was the coach Gilbert Bodart who brought him in via his Italian lawyer. He still had connections at Brescia (Editor’s note: where he played between 1998 and 2000).” A pre-Ye affair Bodart who was still a promising young coach at the time.
“More than waiting for death”: Gilbert Bodart worries with a story about his mental and financial health
Aimed at, it was almost an Erasmus for Ottolini, who had started a university course in Verona to learn foreign languages. Enough to arm himself before embarking on a career where he had more ambitions: agent. While still a kid, he discovered a difficult world, even if he managed to live in it for around ten years. He often joins deals or specializes in the American market, still far from the current organization.
An internship at the Belgian federation before helping Baseggio
It is with this agent’s cap that he one day crosses paths with Walter Baseggio. In November 2005, the Anderlecht midfielder absolutely wanted to leave Sporting and he called a meeting with Herman Van Holsbeeck. In the room, there is also his agent Luca Pelizzon and two Italian agents, including Marco Ottolini, then 25 years old. The interview lasts three hours and an agreement is reached: Baseggio will be able to leave on loan in the winter transfer window for a very small sum. He will join Treviso on January 10.
A lover of our country, Ottolini had already rubbed shoulders with the elite of Belgian football a few weeks earlier by requesting an internship with the federation. Curious to know the inner workings of the “glass house”, still standing at the time, he spent two months in the offices. He was notably responsible for organizing the World Cup qualifying match against Spain at Heysel (0-2).
“This guy was a beast, we didn’t dare approach him”: Walter Baseggio talks about Anderlecht, the Champions League and Zinedine Zidane
Like other Belgian managers, Van Holsbeeck is charmed by this young manager. He had already encountered him in other files before Baseggio and had each time said to himself that Ottolini was a real football enthusiast. That he thought of the ball first before the money. “I think he’s way too nice to be an agent.”he confided one day to a close colleague.
The idea germinated little by little in the head of the sports boss of Anderlecht: why not recruit him to convert him into a scout, he who knows the Italian market so well? He made him a concrete proposal in the fall of 2015. Ottolini accepted, delighted to enter the corridors of power. Until the end of the 2017-2018 season, he will work as an independent scout at Sporting.
Ottolini sent reports of all the young talents in Italy but it was too expensive.
When we turn to the archives, we note relatively few movements between the RSCA and Italy during the Ottolini years. We just notice the arrivals of Stefano Okaka and Sebastian De Maio. “But you have to go back in time to understandexplains a member of the club’s scouting team at this time. There was no data yet to know everything about everyone. Herman wanted to be informed of all market opportunities, especially for young talents. Having someone in a country where so many footballers were playing was an asset for a big Belgian club. Ottolini sent reports of everything that was best in Italian football. He hoped that it could work with certain prospects who had not yet broken through to A but they were already too expensive.
Ottolini’s Italian connections will still be useful to Anderlecht in the sale of Dennis Praet. A difficult matter which got bogged down during the summer of 2016 when the player wanted to leave and Sporting was the recipient of a large sum of money. Via his network, Ottolini convinced Sampdoria to take an interest in this Belgian who had won the Golden Boot the previous year. On August 24, 2016, Praet signed in Genoa and the RSCA raised eight million.
Ottolini’s CV is growing thanks to Anderlecht and Juventus is noticing it. The Old Lady wants to rejuvenate her team and needs experts from the best prospects on the planet. The timing is good since Marc Coucke has just bought Sporting and no longer wants the expensive scouting unit set up by Van Holsbeeck. In 2018, when the new sports director at RSCA Luc Devroe informed Ottolini that the club would no longer call on him, he was already in contact with Turin. He is hired as an international recruiter. And, obviously, he will not forget Belgium. For his first file at Juve, he is pushing for a defender from the U17s of Zulte Waregem via glowing reports, a certain Koni De Winter.
Ottolini will remain important for the man who became Devil (five caps) by being entrusted with one more responsibility at Juventus: responsible for loaned players. He will closely follow De Winter during his rentals at Empoli then at Genoa. While participating in an important plan in Turin: the creation of a U23 team to facilitate the development of young people in contact with Italian professional football.
He changed a Devil’s career
A job that will catch the eye of… 777. Yes, we are talking about the infamous American company which has weighed down Standard’s finances in recent years. When the sporting director of Genoa Johannes Spors was promoted to the sporting management of all the clubs of the 777 group, it was Ottolini who replaced him. With a complicated job: going straight back to Serie A despite the fragility of the owners (that’s an understatement…).
If everything is not perfect, as when he tries to revive, in vain, the whimsical Mario Balotelli, Ottolini succeeds in his mission. Genoa only stayed in Serie B for one year and has since settled into the elite. By making more profit thanks to the sales of talents like Matteo Retegui and… De Winter, bought eleven million from Juventus and sold twenty to AC Milan a year later.
Koni De Winter takes his practical test with AC Milan
All this obviously pleases Turin where we say that the scout recruited from Anderlecht in 2018 has grown up a lot. Management considers him sufficiently equipped to entrust him with the position of sports director. He will have to put Juventus back at the top of Serie A. And as high as possible in Europe. His work began on January 1, 2026. And, among the many congratulatory messages received, there was that of Van Holsbeeck. A man he would not have failed to thank, particularly in interviews in Italy, “for putting his foot in the door.” It should come as no surprise to see Juve scouts in Pro League stadiums in the coming months.
Our series on foreign dual nationals that the Devils can still convince (3/5): Shane van Aarle, the left-handed giant of Juventus
