A great choice of player from your Bast from the Past series.

Looking back, Attilio's time at Palace seems so brief now.
But during those 60 or so games, he achieved legendary status amongst the Palace faithful.
Steve Coppell bought The Bald Eagle from Juventus shortly after our goal scoring attacking midfielder, David Hopkin (whose last minute curler in the Play Off Final at Wembley had gained Palace promotion to The Premiership in 1997) had joined Leeds Utd.
Lombardo's first game was in Palace's yellow away kit with the thick blue "TDK" hoop. To mark the occasion me and a pal and my Dad decided to take the train to Liverpool for the Goodison game. It was a really hot day. The Palace fans still blinking, not quite believing that our little team are now playing the big boys and will get talked about on Match of the Day.
Even though Lombardo was 31 years old already, he looked incredibly light on his feet. He seemed to just float and hover over the turf. Inevitably he opened the scoring with a deadly piece of skill immediately followed by a lethal stab home. The away fans were ecstatic. Like a magician, he won us a penalty in the second half which Bruce Dyer converted to put us 2-nil up. The heat was burning but a chant to the tune of the Cornetto Ice Cream jingle was so apt we didn't care a bit that we were soaked in sweat.

That December I took an Italian mate of mine to see Palace's home game against Liverpool.
By that time, a compatriot of Attilio's was in the starting line up. Early in the first half I saw an almost telepathic linkup between Michele Padovano and Lombardo. The crowd made an appreciative loud murmur as Attilio bamboozled Liverpool's full back with an exquisite back heel. Shortly afterwards, with Palace comfortably on top, everything ( including the entire season) went slowly, but surely more and more pear shaped. Liverpool had a little 17 year old squirt called Michael Owen playing that day. He scored a brace and Palace lost 3-nil. Much worse than that, Lombardo took a knock that would see him substituted and spend Christmas ( possibly quite conveniently!) back in Italy.
By the time he was available for selection again it was already deep into Spring and relegation was looking a certainty. I won't dwell too much on this part of the great man's time in SE25 because it was so traumatic, I've kind of erased it from my memory banks! Yes, he was player manager for a while with Thomas Brolin doing the translation. Yes, we did indeed get relegated despite a heroic away win at Newcastle. The trauma didn't end there either. The following season Attilio formed a classy central midfield partnership with Sasa Curcic before being sold to Lazio to try and ward off the inevitable administration.
I remember him being interviewed shortly afterwards on channel 4's Saturday morning Football Italia TV show. And because he's such a gentleman, the great man had nothing but praise for us Palace fans and although he was saddened, there'd always be a place in his heart for the club.