‘I got a phone call and our manager said, ‘I think you’d better take it’. It was the Pope - I said, ‘Hi Pope, you alright?’ So we went to the Vatican to meet the Pope and shook hands with him’ Paul Gascoigne on meeting Pope John Paul II

Paul Gascoigne shot for the December 2025 issue of FourFourTwo magazine .

Paul Gascoigne should have been on top of the world when he joined Lazio. Instead, just getting on the pitch was a lengthy test of character.

Gazza suffered a self-inflicted injury in the FA Cup final in 1991 and had to work his way back to fitness before his Italian adventure could really begin.