A Season With Verona

by Tim Parks

  ‘My world is falling apart,’ the boy beside me starts to curse rhythmically. He has his face in his hands. ‘Let it be over now. Let it be over. I don’t want to hear anybody talking about hope. I don’t want to hear anyone saying that it’s not mathematical yet, that they still believe we can make it. Let’s go into Serie B. It’s where we belong. Let’s not even try to get into Serie A again. It’s too painful. It’s too painful. Pastorello is a shit. The players are shits. They didn’t try. I’m not going to get a season ticket next year. I’m giving up football. Let’s stay in Serie B for ever. It’s stupid expecting Verona to play in Serie A. All we do is go to games and suffer and suffer and suffer and suffer to no end. There’s no hope, that’s the truth. We’ve got to get used to there being no hope.’

  ‘Abandon all hope, you who enter here.’ What distinguishes the suffering in hell from the suffering in purgatory, my commentary says, is that in hell we have suffering without hope, suffering that doesn’t purge, that doesn’t ennoble, that has no end. ‘Let it end.’ The boy keeps shaking his head. He’s crying. He’s seriously upset. ‘Let it be Serie B and that’s that.’

  An hour later, accelerating away from the stadium, our bus is hit by a shower of stones. In the piazza outside the station, three or four middle-aged women yell hysterically from high balconies. Wearing a thin night-dress, one is leaning dangerously over the railing, long grey hair falling forward. Forza is furious when some of the boys yell back. ‘Where’s your dignity? The brigate don’t talk to old women frothing in their slums.’ This time the police make sure we pay before getting on the train. A turnstile is formed with two policemen holding each end of a truncheon. Each person must pay before that makeshift barrier lifts.

  They’ve put us on the regular night train to Munich. Passengers already on board bang on windows and shout insults at us as we march up the platform, gallantly singing ‘Hellas la mia unica fede’. We have two segregated carriages at the front of the train. Under unnecessary police guard, a vendor pushes his trolley to the connecting door to sell us Cokes and sandwiches. Already people are joking again. A resigned irony reigns. Serie B. ‘Tomorrow, the black armband, butei.’ Hats come over eyes. Try to sleep.

  A couple of hours later, only five minutes after leaving Roma Termini, the train comes to a standstill. The lights go off. Outside is a shadowy slum, a snip of neon. Four of us are stretched from side to side across the seats. The air is stale, the night warm. ‘Attenzione,’ the PA eventually announces. ‘Attenzione. Il capotreno wishes to inform the passengers that this convoglio will be stationary per un tempo indeterminato due to the breakdown of the locomotive.’

  No! We’re stuck. Fucking trains! Fucking inefficient southerners! Hell. The minutes tick by. The lights don’t go on. Oh where, I wonder, is that poet Virgil to lead us out of here, where is the man who’s terza rima took him so nimbly from circle to circle, stadium to stadium. ‘Dio. boia, I have to be at work by eight,’ Stefano mutters. There’s a chorus of me-toos. Eventually we pull into Verona at 5 a.m.

  ‘Ciao ragazzi.’ We say our goodbyes. Verona are surely in Serie B. So this will be the last meaningful trip together this season. ‘Ciao butei.’ Then Scopa shouts, ‘Oh but the wonderful thing about going to Naples is how good you feel when you get back to Verona! Back home! How good, Dio can!’ Driving round the circular road, I pass the big police station by the river. A long queue of perhaps a hundred blacks and Asians has already formed outside. For them it will be another day in their long struggle for the permesso di soggiorno, the work permit, the right to call Verona, as Scopa does, home. The drama of the immigrant’s life, it occurs to me, is so urgent that he has no time for the intense but oddly unreal catastrophes of association football.

  Commedia dell’Arte

  Veronese, you’re one of those people who can’t distinguish football from real life.

  solonapoli.eb@sta

  ‘THE ITALIAN COMEDIANS learn nothing by heart; they need but to glance at the subject of a play before going upon the stage. It is this ability to perform at a moment’s notice which makes a good Italian actor so difficult to replace. Anyone can learn a part and recite it, but something else is required for Italian comedy.’

  Such was the opinion of Evaristo Gherardi, seventeenth-century star of the commedia dell’arte, a form of drama where the actors wore masks and played characters, or more precisely roles, that remained the same whatever the story; instead of learning a script, they improvised and might well change the plot in mid-stream if a better idea occurred to them. Gherardi played Harlequin. He goes on:

  ‘For a good Italian actor is a man of infinite resourcefulness; he matches his words and actions so perfectly with those of his colleagues that he enters instantly into whatever acting and movements are required of him in such a manner as to give the impression that all that they do has been prearranged.’

  Well, how much was prearranged?

  ‘These plays are never withdrawn on account of illness among the actors or because of newly recruited talent.’ So remarked the enthusiastic Count Carlo Gozzi. ‘An impromptu parley before going on the stage, as regards both the plot and the way in which it is to be played, is sufficient to ensure a smooth performance. It often happens that in special circumstances, or because of the relative importance and skill of certain actors, a change in the distribution of the roles is made on the spur of the moment just as the curtain is rising. Yet the comedy is borne along to a gay and sprightly conclusion. It is apparent that these actors penetrate to the very core of their subjects with so many varieties of dialogue that, with each performance, the interpretation seems to be quite new, yet inevitable and permanent.’

  Doesn’t this begin to sound a little like football? Never withdrawn on account of illness. An impromptu parley before going on the pitch … to ensure a smooth performance. A change in the distribution of roles because of the relative importance and skill of certain players. But still there’s the thorny question of exactly how far the plot has or hasn’t been prearranged. On 29 May, 2001, the president of Napoli, Giorgio Corbelli, protested that the penultimate game of the season, between Parma and Verona, was going to be prearranged, to Napoli’s detriment. What we were going to see was twenty-two actors playing their parts. The result had already been decided in Verona’s favour.

  But weren’t Hellas Verona supposed to be dead and done with? Indeed they were. But one of the consequences of the melodrama of Italian life is that every defeat and every victory is interpreted in a much-exaggerated fashion. If, around Christmas, a club is six or nine points clear at the top, the championship is considered over. Then everybody can be amazed when, with a couple of draws and a defeat, it is all suddenly open again. People are easily depressed and elated. Being so is an attribute of the roles they play. And I, too, over the years, must have become a little more Italian, because when I saw Verona five points away from safety with only three games to go, I was convinced that it was over. How can we catch up Vicenza, five points away, not to mention first having to pass Reggina two points ahead and Naples three? The paper calculates that we must win all of the last three games to have any chance. Three victories in a row. We haven’t won two games together all season. No team has ever come back from second-to-bottom only three games from the end. On the train back from Naples, I told Stefano, ‘If Perotti says he still believes we can do it, I’ll kill him.’

  In Tuesday’s ritual post-match interview, Perotti declared, ‘I still believe we can do it.’ Furious, I phoned Saverio Guette. ‘They’ve ruined my bloody book,’ I protested. ‘They’re clowns.’ The marketing man sighed. ‘Chievo are only one point away from Serie A,’ he said. ‘They’re going to overtake us.’

  So now there was the game with Bologna. It was Sunday 27 May. Because many towns were having the second round of voting in mayoral elections, all games were played in the evening, which was a relief, because Italy is hot now. Just as humours shift rapidly from hope to despair and back, so the weather turns a sudden co
rner in spring and it is blistering. Thirty-two degrees. Even at eight-thirty in the evening the stadium was suffocating. Pietro and company were cheerful and resigned. The girls to our left were yawning. ‘Too much sun.’ The men were analysing a season that was already over. It was Pastorello’s fault. He should have fired Perotti way back. He should have spent more money. ‘Let’s just watch the game and enjoy,’ Pietro said. ‘If we can.’ After three minutes, Bologna scored. We were mathematically in B.

  Then I realised that although I thought I had already abandoned hope before the game, actually I hadn’t. Not quite. I had pretended to despair, precisely to keep alive the tiniest hidden hope, flickering deep, deep in my breast. Now it was extinguished. It’s over, I thought. You can relax. Write the last few elegiac pages tomorrow.

  A minute later Verona had equalised. Then on the half-hour came a startling pattern of rapid passes such as the team hasn’t put together all season, ending with the perfect through ball to Adailton, ‘the only Brazilian who can’t play football’, as the fans like to say. Much-whistled, playing awfully up to this point, Adailton looked up as Pagliuca came out, and curved the ball round him so sweetly that it seemed, as Evaristo Gherardi might have said, inevitable, prearranged.’ Two-one. A little less prearranged was the own goal a Bologna defender deflected into his net just before half-time. But it was greeted with equal enthusiasm. Likewise the penalty conceded to the Brazilian striker just two minutes into the second half. Four-one. Needless to say, the boys then did everything they could to throw away even this lead. Again Apolloni was sent off. His fourth expulsion this season. Fifteen minutes from time it was five–two, then five–three, then five-four. But the team hung on, and when it was finally over the whole crowd was trembling with excitement. For from the other stadiums came the perfect set of results. All our rivals defeated. Suddenly Hellas were only two points off the cut, with two games to go. And all along terraces everyone is whispering, ‘Parma. Surely Parma will let us win next week. They’ll give us the game. Then all we have to do is beat Perugia at home. We can do it!’

  Why do people think this? Only a week ago the Italian tote suspended betting on half the games in Serie B. With some teams already promoted or relegated and others still desperate for points, there was the suspicion that the games might not be entirely ‘transparent’. You could put a bet on Rovaniemi-Jokerit in the Finnish league, but not on Empoli–Torino, nor Chievo–Piacenza.

  The following week suspicion switched to Serie A. In the last minutes of the tie Lecce–Parma the Cameroon player Patrick Mboma scored the winning goal for Parma. But did he mean to? A cross comes drifting over. Mboma rises to it, but without conviction. The ball strikes his head and goes into the net. Seeing what has happened, he clutches his hair in dismay. Far from rushing to take the salute of his fans, he bangs an angry fist against the post. Lecce really needed that point to stay out of relegation trouble. Parma were already safely in Champions’ League territory.

  And if Parma were willing to do Lecce a favour, then they should be all the more willing to do one for us. Everyone knows that Pastorello worked at Parma for many years. Isn’t Bonazzoli on loan from Parma? Likewise Serie. Isn’t Laursen going to play for Parma next year? Don’t Parma have various old players of ours? Haven’t they already secured a place in the Champions’ League? They don’t need a result. Above all, didn’t Pastorello buy Hellas Verona with money borrowed from the Tanzi family who own Parma?

  The Tanzi family is fabulously rich. They control Parmalat, a huge food-processing company with various subsidiaries and various interests in football. ‘The rules of the game have been subverted by a dangerous conflict of interests,’ say the left-wing losers in the elections. How can a man who owns half the country’s TV get elected? How can two teams who have financial interests in common play each other at a crucial moment in the season? demands Napoli’s Corbelli. On The Wall someone comments:

  GRUPPO PARMALAT 1 – PARMALAT S.P.A. 2

  PARMA CALCIO S.P.A. 5 – HELLAS VERONA S.P.A. 6

  Over the next few days, interviewed by the press, all the Parma players swear they’re going to do their best, just to show they’re not corrupt. ‘Pastorello, make that phone-call!’ the fans start writing to the website. ‘Call him. Call him!’ And they mean Stefano Tanzi of course. ‘If we are buying the match,’ writes my Caporetto friend in London, ‘please do send me the bank details so I can make my contribution.’

  Meantime an extraordinary tam-tam is beginning. ‘Everybody to Parma.’ ‘Parma or death!’ ‘Parma AND death!’ On Tuesday morning, Parma football club, after consulting with the police, provide only 1,800 tickets. After all, Verona haven’t had more than a few hundred fans at away games recently. The tickets are sold in three hours. ‘To Parma, tickets or no tickets!’ ‘Hellas Army on the move!’ ‘10,000 Brigate Gialloblù! We’ll blow the ball in the net!’

  But, alas, there’s more than a week to wait. The national team are playing and Serie A takes a week off. On the intervening Sunday, Chievo clinch the point they need for promotion in front of a big crowd that must already include thousands of defectors from Hellas. Needless to say, Monday’s Arena bears the headline: ‘The Dream Becomes Reality’. But it’s more like a nightmare in the Hellas camp. ‘People here are suffering, suffering, suffering!’ Guette says grimly. ‘Everybody’s chievando’ – Chievoing – comes an ironic voice over the net (Chiave means ‘key’, chiavare, to fuck). ‘The Mayor is chievando, the football league are chievando, the left are chievando, traitors all over the world, chievando!’

  The only advantage, as it turns out, is that the horrible truth of Chievo’s promotion may have a positive effect on the game with Parma. Hellas must make a last effort. Hellas supporters must come out of the woodwork. It’s now or never. Anything but a win is mathematical relegation and with it a handing of the baton to Chievo. Perhaps for ever. Seven thousand on the move, announces the Arena the day before the game.

  Sunday morning the scene outside the Zanzibar is extraordinary. There have never been so many people. Where have they been all season? Albe, who works in a restaurant, turns up with a huge cake in whose icing he has somehow had imprinted a photograph of the team. Fondo is there. Scopa, Stefano. And amazingly, Glass-eye. ‘Where have you been?’ He embraces me as if we had climbed off the bus from Bari yesterday evening. ‘My season,’ he summarises: ‘Bari, police-station. Vicenza, police-station. Torino, police-station! Then at work I break my leg. Out injured, like Colucci.’ ‘Why weren’t you banned?’ ‘Grace of God.’ He’s in excellent spirits.

  Then another familiar face appears. The handsome man who loaded us on the bus that first night and told us all to leave the headrests white. Banned after the Juventus game, he has just served his time. Came back last week for the Bologna game. Mantice, he’s called. Bellows. He’s tall, strong-featured, full of energy. At once you sense that here is a figure of charisma on a level above all the others, a man who is friendly, excitable, seductive, dangerous. ‘Today we’re going to win,’ he announces. ‘But no racist chants. If we start any racist stuff, Parma will fight to the death.’ Is he talking to Glass-eye? Has Glass-eye understood? He does seem remarkably clear-headed today. But turning to me, he sniggers. ‘If we win, crowd trouble. If we lose, crowd trouble. And if we draw?’ ‘Crowd trouble,’ I chime.

  Piled on the buses, the convoy begins to roll. A further army are setting off on Vespas. It’s only sixty or seventy miles. Flags are streaming. ‘Couldn’t sleep,’ a voice behind me is saying. ‘Had this nightmare where the ball just won’t go in the net.’ ‘Don’t worry, it’s fixed. Two–one to us.’ Then someone says that Pastorello actually phoned a friend of his to say that it was fixed as long as there were no racist chants. ‘Oh bullshit! Pastorello would never be so stupid as to phone anyone.’ ‘Butei, it’s not fixed. They’d never fix it after all the monkey grunts we gave Thuram back at home.’ ‘No monkey grunts today, ragazzi. Absolutely no excuse for the ref to get mean.’ Someone hands me the paper an
d points at an article. The New York Times is sending a photographer to the game to capture the racism of Hellas fans. The New York Times! In provincial Verona the name seems magical. ‘Not a single oo, butei! We’ll send him home empty-handed.’

  An hour early we pull into the stadium compound. Parma is a team built entirely on the Tanzis’ money with no footballing tradition, no real public. The stadium only holds 22,000. The crush to get in the gates is as suffocating and dangerous as anything I’ve seen. As we spill inside the organisers are simply obliged to concede segment after segment to make way for this tidal wave of Veronese. In the event, we take over a whole curva. It’s a fantastic gathering of the clans. Perhaps the last. A fortress of yellow-blue. A solid wall of sound. I haven’t seen anything like this before. ‘Brought shivers down my spine,’ says Leo Colucci afterwards. But now the whistle’s blown, the game is off.

  If you knew a game was fixed, you would hardly want to watch it, would you? But the suspicion that it might be fixed only makes it all the more fascinating. Right behind the goal, in the thick of the crowd, I anxiously scan the back and forth of play for some sign that something unusual is going on. But how can you tell? Verona attack. Parma are elegantly calm, but inconclusive. Behind the fence a black photographer walks up and down taking pictures of us. It’s the man from the Times. Naturally, they have sent a black. Meantime Parma are playing every black in their squad. ‘Five of them,’ says the boy next to me. ‘Five! I didn’t know they had five blacks.’ It’s a red rag to a bull. But there are no grunts today. Nor any insults to their players. And on the half-hour we’re awarded a penalty in what looked a fairly innocuous situation. Goal.