A Season With Verona

by Tim Parks

  Pastorello, Agostino claims, is much more canny than the previous president. ‘When I recommended a Swedish centre-back to him, he went to watch the boy himself three days later and after the game immediately made a big offer. That’s what you have to do. Make up your mind fast. We have to get in one week before the richer clubs.’

  ‘Who was that? I don’t remember a Swede in Verona.’

  ‘The Swedish club turned the offer down.’

  Speggiorin’s English is slow and endearingly precise. He likes to study grammar books, he says. He does lots of written exercises and rarely makes mistakes. I suggest that he has a control obsession, he should relax, try to absorb without understanding, reply without thinking. ‘I’m not that sort of person,’ Agostino objects. ‘I do it this way.’ Then I recall that his job now, as assistant coach, is to teach the players individual skills, not the game as a whole. During training sessions he takes them aside one by one and has them trap the ball a thousand times, first with the right foot, then with the left, now with the chest. He breaks things down into their separate parts. ‘But surely football,’ I put it to him, ‘like language, requires an element of Zen. The game has to play itself through you. Rather than controlling everything, you have to give yourself to it.’ Agostino shakes his head. Everything he has achieved he has achieved only and exclusively by meticulous study.

  And he says one of the problems the players have these days is that they don’t study enough. ‘A player with an all-round education will play better in the end. He has more confidence in himself. Unless you’re a natural-born genius it’s important. Most players are completely lost when they have to leave football.’

  Speggiorin is rightly proud of himself for having overcome the crisis of having lost a team, having crashed out of his dream career. Listening to him, I can see that his whole attitude is admirable. I even agree with him. Yet somehow I begin to feel that, together with Perotti, it doesn’t add up to charisma or inspiration. I fear there’s no real motor behind Hellas Verona, no dynamism. Where there should be ferocious appetite and huge egos, we have only something well-meaning, calculated, even accountant-like: two men getting on sensibly and modestly with a job they’ve learned. ‘Il ragioniere tira le somme’ is a typical headline when the Arena is talking about Perotti: ‘The accountant does his sums.’ I fear this doesn’t bode well. I fear that this group lacks a megalomaniac. Only Foschi seems to have that kind of drive. Of all the people I’ve met, he’s the only one I would sweat blood for.

  But now it’s team talk-time. Perotti is going to announce the team and give them their pre-match briefing. This is strictly confidential. This is sacred. Nobody, not even Agnolin or Foschi, can penetrate this mystery. I head up to my room and jot down the following reflections on a sheet of headed hotel notepaper:

  ‘Personal stories: it was a mistake to think you could understand football through a weave of personal stories: Agnolin, Perotti, Cvitanovic, Agostino, their personal lives are quite insignificant beside the phenomenon of the stadium, the banners, the chants, the hypnotism of the game.’

  I suck my pen, but that’s it, that’s all I’ve learned.

  Turning on the TV to kill a little time, I find that they’re discussing the riots in Reggio Calabria that Flavio Fiorini talked to me about yesterday. It seems it’s the thirtieth anniversary of the revolt. The national government had moved the provincial capital of Calabria from Reggio to the smaller Catanzaro. Obviously there were private interests involved. Then the politicians tried to blame communist agitators for the uprising. They sent in the army. But the rebellion was quite spontaneous, the ex-mayor is explaining. He’s an old man now. Black-and-white film footage shows dramatic clashes between troops and mob, something far beyond anything that happens at football matches. The uprising was brutally suppressed.

  ‘So it was a failure,’ the interviewer provokes. ‘Not at all,’ the old politician responds. ‘We learned so much from those days. We learned that we were a community. That we had the energy to make our voice heard. But most of all we learned that we were on our own. We had to get on and help ourselves without any help from Rome.’

  How Italian this is! After every defeat a player will say: we have to ‘stringersi come gruppo’: get closer together as a group. ‘We can’t expect the help that others get from the referees, we’ll have to do it on our own.’ After the defeat at Juventus, someone wrote on The Wall: ‘Siamo sempre più soli, sempre più gialloblù’ – we’re ever more alone, ever more yellow-blue.

  But don’t think about defeat, Tim! I kill the TV. It’s time to meet Pastorello.

  ‘If we win today you can travel with us to every game,’ he says generously. He’s very tall and gives a powerful impression of how much care he takes over self-presentation: the groomed beard, grey and white, the coifed hair, the perfect jacket and tie.

  ‘Perhaps we’ll win five–nil.’

  ‘One–nil, own goal at the last minute would be quite sufficient, thank you very much,’ Pastorello says. ‘Then we’ll take you with us everywhere per scaramanzia’ – as a good luck charm.

  I hadn’t thought of this. I see myself travelling all over the country with Hellas Verona as they achieve a miraculous series of away wins. I’m interviewed by all the papers, I begin to ask for money.

  ‘Have you met Agnolin?’ the president asks.

  ‘He’s been telling me how much he enjoys it when the crowd shout sei un bastardo, arbitro.’

  This was exactly the wrong thing to say. ‘Well I can assure you’, the president tells me coldly, ‘that it’s no fun at all hearing the curva sing Pastorello vaffanculo.’ He turns on his heel and heads for the dining room.

  The players ate at elevenish so as to have digested before the game. They have already left for the stadium. Foschi and the rest of the staff have gone with them. At lunch there are just myself, Agnolin, Pastorello and two friends of his who have actually driven down from Verona.

  Pastorello starts to tell us how his sciatica has kept him awake all night. He can’t find a comfortable position. Everybody offers advice. But there’s only so long you can talk about insomnia and sciatica. There are a few moments of embarrassed silence, a few uneasy remarks tossed back and forth in the hope of finding a conversation that isn’t football.

  Then unexpectedly Agnolin says, ‘How is Matarese taking it?’ Matarese is the president of Bari and an important figure in football league politics. After yesterday’s loss, his team are bottom. Pastorello flew down south with the beaten team.

  ‘Well,’ il presidente nods, becoming serious. ‘I thought he took it well. He said he felt “sereno”. He wouldn’t make the mistake he’d made with Boban. He’ll go on as he is.’

  I ask, ‘What mistake was that?’

  Pastorello explains that in the past Matarese had tried to solve his team’s problems by paying a lot of money for a big-name star, like Boban, but that in the end this strategy doesn’t work with the small provincial team. Doesn’t work money-wise, that is. If you’re lucky you might just stay up, but the only thing that’s certain is that either way you’ll be broke. He reflects, ‘The only thing we can do is to train up younger players and sell them on.’

  ‘And the team?’ Agnolin wants to know.

  Pastorello says that he noticed one or two behaviour patterns among the Bari players that looked bad. For example, some of them were wearing the team uniform, but some weren’t. Then the sports director had scolded the players for their arrogant behaviour with the check-in staff. ‘He was right to tell them off, but not in front of me. And really of course he was complaining about their having lost the game.’

  As in the conversation with Foschi yesterday, I’m struck by how these men, who have never studied psychology, are extremely sensitive to group dynamics.

  ‘With all the pressure,’ I ask him, ‘are you still able to enjoy the game?’

  ‘When we win,’ Pastorello says grimly.

  Agnolin already has his fingers over his lips. ‘Don�
�t talk about the game. Brings bad luck.’

  And so up to our rooms for our luggage, then out to the cars for the match. Much to my surprise it now emerges that the sleepless Pastorello has made the twenty-minute walk into town this morning and bought two paintings from the awful exhibition in the seminario. Not on the advice of Agnolin, I trust. ‘I have a big collection of paintings,’ he says offhand. ‘I like paintings.’

  At the stadium we’re shown up to our expensive seats right above the halfway line. The structure is small and low, but attractive. Unfortunately, like Bari’s bigger stadium, the concrete bowl has gaps and a brisk wind is blowing through. It’s cold. Way over to the right the brigate have arrived, only fifty or sixty of them. They are busy hanging up their banners. One very long one says: ‘Nicola, anche assente, sei sempre con noi.’ Even absent you’re always with us. Nicola, I later discover, is one of their number who has recently died. Such commemorations are part of stadium ritual. There’s a slow hand-clap, then it’s business as usual: ‘Acqua e sapone, ci vuole acqua e sapone.’ Soap and water, it takes soap and water (to wash a southerner). ‘Lecce, Lecce, vaffanculo!’

  Ten minutes before kick-off the staff and the four or five players who aren’t even going to be on the subs’ bench come up to join me in the stands. I find myself with Claudio Ferrarese sitting on my right and an ageing Lecce supporter on my left, his wife beside him. In front of me are Foschi, Pastorello and Agnolin, all grey and grim.

  I hadn’t thought of this. I hadn’t imagined that the owner of a football club would be obliged to watch his team play among alien supporters. What could be worse? In the opening five minutes Lecce have three wonderful scoring chances. All around us people, mainly old and well-to-do, leap to their feet in enthusiasm. Pastorello & Co. hunch smaller, pulling their overcoats about them in the nagging breeze. This is cruel. These men have done all the work they can: they have bought the players, chosen the coach, made sure every facility is available, and now they must sit back and watch and hope among an ocean of people just waiting to laugh at them if they got it wrong. It’s a strange way of doing business. I’m feeling nervous.

  Then about twenty minutes into the game Verona score. The referee awards a dubious free kick in the very place the team were practising kicks from yesterday. Oddo and Adailton go up to the ball and consult. Adailton raises his hand. Oddo’s going to take it, I tell myself. Oh shit, Gonnella’s moving too soon. Too soon! But no, Adailton takes it after all. Gonnella is the decoy. Bonazzoli lunges forward at the near post and flicks the ball in. Incredible. They must have changed the signalling system in the pre-game talk, in case some spy was present at the training session yesterday. And it worked! In the midst of a sea of gloom all around us, the Verona contingent leap to their feet embracing. My estimation of Perotti soars. Verona hold on with no trouble at all till half-time, and this despite the absence of Laursen in defence. I begin to hope.

  Espresso at half-time. ‘What if I bring good luck,’ I joke to Foschi. His whole body shudders. He covers a grey lip with a white finger. ‘Not yet,’ he says. ‘Too soon.’ When I get back to my seat Ferrarese is talking on the phone. He’s vociferous. He doesn’t stop me overhearing. ‘A brilliant training session yesterday and I’m not even on the bench, Dio buono! All defenders on the bench. All defenders! What’s he going to do if he needs to put an attacker on?’

  The whistle blows. For ten minutes all is well, then it happens. Ferron kicks upfield. In the centre circle, a Lecce player miscalculates. Perhaps the ball is ballooning a little in the wind. Instead of taking it on his chest, he has to lunge. This is purest chance. The ball just strikes his knee and leaps forward right between Verona’s two advancing centre-backs. Standing on the edge of the offside trap, Lecce’s striker, Osorio, is suddenly running for a ball which has fallen exactly to his feet in a way no calculated pass from the midfield possibly could have. Ferron doesn’t have a chance.

  ‘Fools!’ Foschi shouts. ‘Idiots. They’ve been begging for Lecce to score for the last ten minutes.’

  How sad to have to watch all around you exulting. Clearly I will never be able to speak of bringing good luck again. I should never have mentioned luck at all. Verona collapse. Lecce suddenly look brilliant. They score a second. Hellas press forward, desperate to equalise. Salvetti shoots from point-blank range. The Lecce keeper saves. ‘All defenders on the bench,’ Ferrarese had said. Munching biscuits, the boy is watching grimly. He should have been picked.

  Immediately after Salvetti misses, Lecce score a third. At which Pastorello’s guests get up in a hurry and leave. ‘May as well start driving back early.’ The old couple beside me are gloating over our discomfort. ‘Vai Lecce vai!’ The home crowd are in full throat. No sooner have the two men gone than the floundering Seric brings down a striker in the box. The referee points at the spot and it’s four-one. In the confusion of joy among the Lecce tribe, Pastorello leaps to his feet and hares off down the stairs. How can one envy a man who has to put up with this kind of experience?

  To make matters worse, the news now comes through that Napoli, who had been fourth from bottom, have actually won at the Olimpico against Lazio. And Reggina have won at Parma. These results seem impossible, surreal. How can Napoli beat Lazio? It would be like Charlton Athletic winning at Old Trafford. Verona are in the relegation zone. We’re the fourth from bottom now, Dio boia. As all around me hurry off to the dressing rooms, I’m left alone to enjoy a prolonged choral performance from the Lecce fans exulting in their curva. ‘Serie B Serie B Serie B!’ they’re chanting at the miserable gaggle of brigate fenced off in their cage eight hundred miles from home.

  I retreat to the poorly lit security compound by the team bus, where I’m obliged to hang around for almost an hour. The players come out of the changing room one by one. There are a couple of palm trees in pots, a low wall with a patch of grass. Cassetti has tears in his eyes. ‘But you were only on the field ten minutes,’ I tell him. ‘It can hardly be your fault.’ He pulls out his telefonino and slinks off. ‘But you scored a wonderful goal,’ I tell Bonazzoli. Glazed, he pulls out his telefonino. Soon they’re all perched on the wall or among the palm trees, like so many sad pigeons on a winter evening, and each one of them has his telefonino out, explaining the lost game to mother or girlfriend. Finally Agnolin appears, grim, professorial. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he says. It seems Pastorello has fled in the car with his two friends and his newly purchased pictures. ‘He couldn’t face the airport scenario.’

  What is the airport scenario, you wonder? The egregious commiseration of gloating strangers: ‘Don’t worry, it’ll go better next time.’ People are approaching the team as they huddle by the check-in, offering words that cannot possibly give comfort. ‘You did your best, we were too good for you today.’

  On the plane I’m next to Perotti again. At last it occurs to me that more than a way of initiating me into the mysteries of football, it might actually be an attempt to isolate the coach from the others. No one wants to sit next to him. Out comes Ken Follett. Il codice zero.

  I turn to the left, where fortunately I seem to have the only member of the group not in a state of deep personal crisis: Marco, the kit man. He’s solid, paunchy, balding, sensible. ‘The trouble is,’ he sighs, ‘some of them won’t want to play in that shirt again. I might have to change the lot of them.’

  Often, when a game ends particularly badly, the players don’t want to use the same kit. A question of scaramanzia. In response to my questions, Marco explains how it works. On Monday he counts out how many shirts have been given away. If a player gives away his shirt, either to opposing players or to the crowd, then he has to pay for it. About 100,000 lire. Then there are always a few shirts given at the beginning of the game to the linesmen and the referee. And sometimes they come and ask you for more than you’ve given them. Yes, the president of each club always gives the referees and linesmen something before the game. Obviously if it’s Roma and you can give them Batistuta’s shirt, all the bet
ter. The ref is flattered, he’s reminded that this team has famous players and really ought to win.

  ‘But what do they do with all the shirts?’

  ‘Collect them. Sell them.’

  He talks for a long time about all the presents the club is constantly making and how complicated it makes his life. ‘Of course there’s an unspoken blackmail to it all,’ he says. ‘There’s always the feeling that if you don’t give them what they want, they’ll take it out on you somehow.’

  ‘Damiano, ciao!’

  ‘Ciao, Michele!’

  The gloom starts to lift at Fiumicino. Big Michele Cossato waves to someone he knows. The huge thoroughfare that links all the gates at the airport is buzzing with football teams all changing planes at more or less the same time on their way back from their various games all over the country. Players wave to each other, they exchange notes on their games. With telling and retelling, the defeat, at least for some, begins to sink into the past.

  But not for Foschi. Perotti has disappeared. He’s taking a plane home to his wife in Genoa. Monday is the footballer’s day off. But why, I wonder, does his wife live in Genoa? Why didn’t she move to Verona for the year? It can’t be good, this feeling of detachment from the town. The players drift towards the self-service restaurant where it seems a section has been cordoned off for us. And as each boy goes in through the glass doors, he has to pass by Foschi who has taken a seat right outside in the corridor, whence, huddled in his overcoat, he glares accusingly at them as they pass. As soon as he’s through the door, Seric giggles and says in broad Australian, ‘Oh these Italians are so bloody gloomy when they lose.’