All this week Sportsmail will be celebrating Italian football in the 1990s, in the build-up to BT Sport's new documentary on the glory days of Serie A. AMITAI WINEHOUSE details the crazy spending that fuelled Italian football's glory days before the inevitable crash...

If some of the transfer fees thrown around the Premier League this summer made eyes water and fists shake, at least they did not incur the wrath of god.

In 1992, the year the Premier League began, Gianluigi Lentini, a winger with 16 goals to his name over 111 appearances for Torino, broke the world transfer fee with his £13million move to AC Milan.

Media across the country, across the world, went wild at this ever-growing market, Lentini being the apparent cap. Little did they know.

AC Milan paid £13m for Gianluigi Lentini (right), a fee that even the Vatican disapproved of

Jean-Pierre Papin (left) and Gianluca Vialli both broke the world transfer record in 1992

The Archbishop of Canterbury did not comment on Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's £35m move to Liverpool. There were no missives from the chief rabbi when Chelsea paid £70m for Alvaro Morata. The Dalai Lama kept out of the debate on Alexandre Lacazette's £46.5m switch to Arsenal. But the Vatican even felt moved to comment on Lentini's transfer, calling the fee 'an offence to the dignity of work'.

Prices in the Italian game were spiralling. In 1992, the transfer record was broken three times, twice by AC Milan either side of Gianluca Vialli's £12m move to Juventus, with Lentini the last. Milan were the first team to break the £10m threshold when they bought Jean-Pierre Papin that summer. The Premier League may have launched that year, but the eyes of the world were on Italy.

In fact, between 1990 and 2000, the world-record transfer fee was broken 10 times. On all but three of those occasions, the buying club played in Serie A. The last one, Hernan Crespo's move to Lazio from Parma for £35.5m, was both the peak and the moment before the fall of the Italian game – the Argentinian's move is the last time a club from the country has broken the record.

It caused a reporter from the BBC to ask the question: 'Has the world gone mad?'

Back to Lentini and 1992, though. Deities aside, at least the move initially seemed to work on the pitch. He was a key cog in Fabio Capello's side as Milan captured the Serie A title and reached the final of the Champions League, where they surprisingly lost to Marseille.

That would be Lentini's final hurrah as a player. In 1993 he was involved in a serious car accident and while he recovered, he was never the same player again. Too much was expected of a man who was dogged by memory loss and blurred vision.

Marcel Desailly summed it up: 'You could see the skills, how he was before the accident and after the accident, the balance was completely different'. Who knows how that £13m fee, exorbitant in retrospect, would have been viewed these days if he had not made the decision to drive back from a pre-season tournament in Genoa in August 1993?

But Lentini was just one symbol of a period in which the Italian game ruled both the pitch and the transfer market.

It was not even those headline signings that stand out to this day. Take Christian Vieri, for example.

The Bolognese striker was a good striker. But between 1991, when he made his debut for Torino, and 1997, he did not score more than 12 league goals in any campaign.

That did not stop him being at the centre of the market. Every year over an eight-year period, he switched clubs. Torino to Pisa. Pisa to Ravenna. Venezia to Atalanta. Atalanta to Juventus. 'Like Brigitte Nielsen', said Juventus owner Gianni Agnelli, 'he's not on the market.'

Wrong. Juventus sold him to Atletico Madrid, where he finally marked himself out as an elite goalscorer, with 24 goals in 24 La Liga games. But even then he did not settle, joining the nouveau riche of Lazio for £25m.

Christian Vieri summed up the spending madness - here he signs for Atletico Madrid in 1997

Vieri played for nine clubs in nine years, including Juventus (left) and Lazio

The Italian striker poses at Inter Milan with another huge buy - £19m striker Ronaldo

Ronaldo's transfer proved Inter had enough cash to buy any player they fancied

That was not the end, as Inter Milan made a world-record bid of £32m, signed him and finally gave him a home. Once again, the Vatican weighed in on the fee. 'It is an offence to the poor,' wrote their official newspaper.

Sergio Cragnotti, Lazio's owner, was equally annoyed: 'I made a great economic sacrifice last year to take him to Rome. I did not expect such an attitude'.

Elio Di Cristofalo, a 25-year-old fan, was unable to get his head around the deal and threw himself under a train, leaving a note that read: 'Addio… I don't even know why I am still alive. Lazio have sold Vieri for £32m. All that money for a footballer, but money is not everything in life.'

ITALY'S WORLD-RECORD TRANSFER FEES AFTER 1990 £8million - Roberto Baggio, Fiorentina to Juventus (1990) £10m - Jean-Pierre Papin, Marseille to AC Milan (1990) £12m - Gianluca Vialli, Sampdoria to Juventus (1990) £13m - Gianluigi Lentini, Torino to AC Milan (1990) £19.5m - Ronaldo, Barcelona to Inter Milan (1996) £32m - Christian Vieri, Lazio to Inter Milan (1999) £35.5m - Hernan Crespo, Parma to Lazio (2000) Advertisement

That sad tale aside, whatever clubs did, they simply could not seem to pin him down.

Until Inter. It was the first club he would stay with for more than a season, with Vieri eventually spending six years at the San Siro.

Not that Vieri had an incredible impact on the fortunes of the Milan club. The goals came – 103 in 143 league games – but Inter did not win Serie A again until after Vieri left.

Part of the Vieri project for Inter was the intention to partner him up with another world-record-breaking signing, Ronaldo. The Brazilian's arrival at the San Siro from Barcelona for £19.5m in 1997 just symbolised where Italian football was at this juncture – whoever was good, they took.

The pair never really worked together due to a series of injury problems. That was not the only challenge for Inter at that point.

Lazio may have lost Vieri in 1999 but they gained something far greater within a year – only the second scudetto in their entire history.

Cragnotti's arrival as owner in 1992 had changed the face of the club. He was responsible for Paul Gascoigne's signing, which had a big part to play in the United Kingdom's fascination with the Italian top flight.

Sven Goran Eriksson was the manager and built a brilliant attacking football side. He also had access to incredible resources, bringing in the likes of Marcelo Salas (£16m) and Juan Sebastian Veron (£18m).

In the summer of 1998 alone, he spent eight-figure fees on Vieri, Salas, Sinisa Mihajlovic, Dejan Stankovic and Ivan de la Pena. Sky blue shirts aside, the comparisons with a modern day Manchester City are obvious.

And even after they won the title, they were not sated. Crespo was snapped up from Parma in a world-record £35.5m deal.

Hernan Crespo shakes hands with Lazio president Sergio Cragnotti after signing for £35m

A year later, in 2001, Zinedine Zidane left Juventus for Real Madrid in a move that marked the end of the big Italian spending

In the end, the spending worked for Lazio. Over Eriksson's four years at the club, they won seven trophies. In their entire history to the point of the Swede's arrival in 1997, Lazio had captured just three pieces of silverware. 'It was very good because in Italy, if you win the league and you are not Milan, Inter or Juventus, it is a very big thing,' Eriksson recalled.

Lazio really marked the end of Italy's peak spending years. There were notable moves after that point. Gianluigi Buffon's £33m transfer to Juventus from Parma in 2001 was the highest fee paid for a goalkeeper until Ederson joined Manchester City this summer.

But it was probably symbolic when Real Madrid smashed the world transfer record that same year to pluck Zinedine Zidane from Juventus for £46.6m. The previous Italian dominance of the market was over. The real wealth now lay elsewhere.

Still, they'll always have the 1990s. And at least now the Vatican are not too busy on transfer deadline day.