A Summer's Remembrance...

 

It was the summer of '77, I wasn't even eleven years old and my mother was lecturing me to stay away from everything related to football passion, including bar fights and of course stadiums. She was probably right and had foreseen well, but the desire to kick the ball had manifested itself anyway, with the same punctuality with which pimples would arrive a few years later and then, as Battiato used to say, those stupid senseless infatuations.

It was immediately clear that my forty kilos of skin and bones would never end up in the top scorers' hall of fame, nor would we ever make trips beyond those fifty-three kilometers that separated my town from the provincial capital. But we definitely played football, and when there was no way to put together a couple of teams with at least four players per side, like Brazil-Italy, Brazil-France or Brazil-Real Madrid, we were content to sweat in those fresh laundered shirts with just a few of us, to decree the end of new jeans and to condemn tennis shoes to certain death. Among the most recurring performances - because these were true Actor's Studio interpretations - there was the one where you assumed the identity of a certain, specific football champion, idol of the crowds and unattainable trading card to exchange at school after exhausting negotiations, and you promised - declaring it in advance like calling your shot in a game of pool - to head the ball or volley it or bicycle kick it, the ball that someone would commit to kick roughly in your direction. And if you succeeded, if that scissor kick really came off well or if that header after a five-meter run-up hit the top corner of the goalpost without a net, you had the right to run across the field, celebrate in the manner of the champion you had declared to be, jump until exhaustion and simultaneously improvise the commentary, complete with jubilation, redundant terms and radio interference. If you were good, but really good, you could even imitate the screaming crowd that accompanied the commentator's joy.

They were rare but they happened, those occasions when we remained just two, me and my friend. My friend, I remember, had put the ball on the patch of yellowed grass from where crosses usually started, had looked around and stretched his legs and sought the right concentration after testing the air currents. Before kicking, however, before risking my low esteem for the poor precision of the pass or worse, before running the risk of hitting the thorny bush and prematurely ending the rubber ball's career, he had looked at me worried. He was a precise guy, and I swear, even now he's a real stickler. In that game you couldn't improvise, approximation was banned and lack of seriousness, we were certain, would bring bad luck at least until mid-August.

"Well?" "Well what?" I had asked. "Well, who are you going to be?"

He had every right to ask. I had already played as Causio, Rivera, and Chiarugi. Boninsegna had hit the post at the beginning of the afternoon and Chinaglia, well, I had never liked him. I had a soft spot for Roberto Dinamite, the Brazilian who would launch missiles and torpedoes but I didn't feel up to it, not with my sparrow legs and that shirt that reached my knees.

"Benetti," I had answered.

Not that I understood football. I was interested and felt those itches and knew that soon I would fall in love with it definitively but for the moment, for that summer, I was content to listen to friends' discussions, to follow on Sundays, getting a bit bored, the second half of the match which was the bread to nourish oneself with football for the whole week. And then there remained the marbles and newspaper headlines read for free while dying of boredom in the long blue afternoons. But Benetti had stuck with me, for that face like a bad-tempered Viking, for the pockmarked skin as if a swarm of meteorites had bombarded him without hurting him. For the broad shoulders and for that shark smile that was seen once a year if you were lucky. My friend's objection had been ready:

"But Benetti is a midfielder. If you must, be Zaccarelli."

But my little fan's heart, the one that would soon become an adult heart full of passion, beat for that other side, that of the bad guys/thieves and the fans who were all illiterate and Agnelli family suck-ups and...

"No. I won't be Zaccarelli!"

"Then," he had suggested and already knew he wouldn't be surprised by all my ignorance, "then be Paolo Rossi..."

Caught off guard and fearing a joke, I had asked who this person was, with such a mundane name as to be unoriginal even for a Bruno Bozzetto strip. Paolo Rossi, such a common name, ordinary, predictable. Rossi, I remembered well because the teacher had given us a lesson, was the most common surname along with Bianchi and then Verdi because things were like that, had always been like that. Our country was divided into opposing factions since time immemorial and so what was so special about this Paolo Rossi? My friend, who as I've already told you was a very precise type and I guarantee you that even now... had briefed me. Few but very useful information.

"He's an opportunist..." had been the answer.

"Like... like Cruijff?"

"No way! Cruijff is technical, with golden feet. One who takes you for a ride for half an hour and then, when your tongue is hanging down to your chin, still dribbles past the goalkeeper and puts it in. Like Claudio Sala, the poet of goals."

My verdict had been issued without even examining the evidence - "Then Paolo Rossi is useless!"

He was disappointed. Too little football knowledge chewed and still those tactical gaps that I would have to fill as soon as possible. "Then be Bettega," he had told me, shrugging his shoulders resignedly and now I don't remember anymore. I don't remember if I had managed a header even vaguely similar to those of cabeza blanca or if, simply, I had sent the ball to deflate among the thorns. What I do remember, however, is that from then on I had become interested in that Paolo Rossi: biography, statistics, technical characteristics and then everything else. I had followed the international cups and friendly matches. Sport Sera had become my favorite show and then Domenica Sportiva, but only if I didn't have a test at school the next day. The following summer, just in time for the World Cup, I was already a passionate fan, a full-fledged and dangerous delinquent, carried away by arms from bars on the coast where they showed the first matches in color. My father, embarrassed, would apologize to the patrons for my, let's say, exuberant character and would accompany me to a second bar to watch the second half. He doesn't even know but Argentina - Italy, the one from the colonels' World Cup, broadcast on TV in the middle of the night and where Bettega had hit the posts to the point of headbutting them in desperation, I had eavesdropped from my little room.

So, that's how Paolo Rossi had entered my life and along with him that wonder of a game that is football.

Today Paolo Rossi has left it and I don't know if you, I don't know if among those of my age, among those who spent summers afraid that the ball would end up in the bushes, among those who scraped their knees on the asphalt and who when the shot was high - and the goal was made with jackets - would understand each other with a glance between one team and the other, if there is someone who feels the void that I feel.