A Season With Verona

by Tim Parks

  ‘You should have written your book last year,’ one of them says, ‘when Cesare was here.’

  This can only be bad news for Attilio Perotti.

  ‘So what was so good about him?’

  ‘Everything,’ Beppe says. He thinks, then explains, ‘He used to train the players without the ball.’ The older men nod. ‘It looked crazy, but it was brilliant. He would make them play without the ball. If Melis moves here then Italiano automatically moves there and Falsini overlaps there. And the moment they’re even a metre out of place, stop and start again. Stop, start again. You do it without the ball so that you’re not distracted by it, you don’t keep looking out for it, letting it condition your movements. You’re only thinking of your place in relation to the other player, to all the other players. Then when you’ve got it exactly right, a dozen times, OK, you add the ball. That’s why things began to work so well.’ Beppe is earnest. ‘You remember Melis and Falsini on the wing?’

  How could I forget! The last two seasons were galvanised by a fantastic partnership on the left wing, an endless duet of triangles and overlaps. Again and again these two men, neither star players, would pass through even the most surly of catenaccios with a rapid, ever-varied series of movements that must have seemed miraculously unpredictable to the hapless defenders. It was Prandelli’s imagination coming to life on the pitch, a projection of the coach’s mind. But Falsini has gone now and Melis is only half the man without him.

  Beppe sighs. ‘You have to do that complicated stuff now. The game’s too fast otherwise, and then you have all these demolition men in midfield. They’re just waiting to destroy you. When one man goes out you have to have another who knows exactly what to do when he comes in.’

  ‘The game is choked by red tape,’ the masseur goes on. He begins to explain about the anti-doping situation. For every game two people from each team are selected, ‘supposedly randomly’, for a urine test. There are three possible results. Positive, negative and ‘not negative’. ‘What can “not negative” mean?’ Two players from Perugia were recently found ‘not negative’. They are under investigation, suspended, but without anyone being sure what they’ve done. Before the game a representative of the team has to give the referee a sealed envelope, with a signature across the seal, detailing any medicine taken by any member of the team over the past week. This will be opened in the event of a positive test to see if the result can be legitimately explained. The problem is that the team doctor is criminally responsible if the test is positive. And that could mean no more than that some player has used some hormone cream on a skin problem. And maybe he hasn’t told you. Or worse still, he is taking some illegal substance, but you don’t know. And you’re responsible.

  Beppe goes on and on. The others nod. It’s fascinating how many details there are that you would never have thought of: reminding the players not to pee directly after the game in case they’ve been selected for the dope test. ‘Of course sometimes a player forgets and then you’re waiting for the poor guy to pee and he can’t pee and you’ve got a plane to catch and everybody saying pee, pee.’

  ‘Beppe! Oh Beppe!’

  It’s time for the morning training session. The masseur is required. The boys are already hanging around in the foyer. All the time we are here, there are two policemen on guard in the lobby and a police car outside beside the bus. I want to go right out to watch them train, but Agnolin is against it. We can go along later. He suggests we see the town. Taking the same route I walked yesterday, he talks about the history of the place. The Romans, the Norman invasion. ‘The Venetians used Brindisi as a convenient place to replenish a ship and so had a big effect on the architecture.’ Is he a Professor of History, I wonder.

  Since it’s a bank-holiday there’s almost no one about. Although there can be no possible difficulty in finding the centre, Agnolin stops to ask directions of three pretty traffic policewomen who are turning away cars from the restricted historic areas. Piazza Duomo, when we arrive, is all but empty. Agnolin insists on exploring an exhibition of contemporary art under the porticoes of the seminary. Garish and incomprehensible, the paintings are for sale. Suddenly I realise that the thickly bearded Agnolin looks a little like John Ruskin. He likes the play of light and dark in this picture in particular, he says. Could he be an art professor?

  Finally, and to my immense relief, we make it out to the training ground, a pleasant sports club in the suburbs. The inevitable policemen are guarding the team bus. One has a machine gun. The boys are already well on with their practice game. I glue my nose to a green fence and leave Agnolin to take a phone-call.

  It’s not the first training session I’ve seen. Any midweek afternoon you can watch the boys working out on a pitch behind the stadium. There’s even a tier of rotting wooden benches to sit on and in the winter twilight perhaps fifty or a hundred people will be scattered around worrying and arguing about our chances of avoiding relegation. ‘Cassetti and Italiano are barely up to Serie B, never mind A!’ An old man flicks his lighter on and off. ‘It’s not the players, it’s the coach!’

  Most of the talkers are pensioners, they pull their trilbies over their eyes and smoke. But there are some younger men too. They talk less and stare hard. And of course there are a few girls hoping to see the young blond Gilardino. ‘Does anyone have Alberto Gilardino’s address?’ one girl writes endlessly to The Wall. ‘Can someone introduce me to him?’

  For some reason these training sessions always remind me not so much of my own time kicking a ball about in the cold, but of the evenings when I followed my father round the church as he prepared to lock the place up on winter evenings after choir practice. It’s the sense of being admitted backstage that links these moments, the awareness that you’re witnessing the humdrum mechanics that make a dream possible. And as in the past when I watched my father pottering among the pews, footsteps echoing in the empty nave, so now, seeing the players fuss with their socks or shin-pads, or pull a woolly hat down over an unwisely shaved scalp, I’m struck by how fragile the foundations of those dreams are. When the choir launches into its processional hymn to the thunder of the organ, when the players burst in bright colours on to the field, then everything seems possible, the blood thrills. But when you see them milling about in the drizzle, or complaining about a backache, you appreciate that you mustn’t count on them. The smart fan does not go to training sessions.

  Still, at least the boys come to life on a football pitch. In the lobby they looked like zombies. ‘Adda Adda, here, Adda!’ Adailton traps and passes. They are playing two-touch in the tight space of perhaps a quarter-pitch, showing skills they would never risk during a game. ‘Gili, Gili, Gili, now!’ Salvetti takes a pass and lets it spin up his shin, then twists round and catches it on his heel before side-kicking it into the path of Mazzola. Were they really more talented years ago? Ferrarese tries an overhead shot. He connects, but not quite cleanly enough. As he goes down he seems to bounce back off the grass. ‘Bona! Bona!’ someone calls. You can sense their energy, the rush and thud of their weight, things you can’t get up in the curva. All the same, from ground level you get none of the sense of geometry you have higher up. Agnolin comes to stand beside me. ‘I wonder’, I ask him, ‘who was the first person to realise how beautiful football would look when seen from above.’ He seems annoyed. ‘Gonnella moves too early,’ he says.

  They’re practising free kick routines now. The ball is more or less at the top-right corner of the box. Oddo and Adailton stand either side of it. The Italian can strike it right-footed curling high across the goal. The Brazilian can strike it left-footed curling low towards the goal. If Oddo is to strike, Bonazzoli makes a sudden decoy movement at the near-side of the area while Gonnella must run in for the high header on the far post. If Adailton strikes it, Gonnella makes the decoy run while it’s Bonazzoli who must move sudden and late to flick the harder lower cross into the near corner.

  ‘Gonnella is moving too early,’ Agnolin repeats. At once I sense
that this is a criticism of Perotti, who stands with his back to us just the other side of the fence in stony silence. Each time the kick is taken, he shakes his head then nods towards the spot to have them repeat it. Nobody, it occurs to me, has yet had a word of praise for Perotti.

  They try the free kick at least twenty times. If Adailton raises his arm, Oddo is to take it. If no arm is raised, Adailton is to take it. Sometimes the strikers get the cross wrong. Sometimes the attackers move out of sync. Gonnella must count two after Adailton raises his arm. Sometimes the defenders hustle the attackers off the ball. But of course the defenders know what is going to happen, so it’s not like a real game scenario. Sometimes the attackers reach the ball but head it straight into the arms of the keeper. Is it really possible, I wonder, to impose these plans on the unpredictable nature of the game? But how else can you train? After fifteen minutes they still haven’t got the ball in the net and Perotti moves them on to corners, then penalties. I’m surprised how little he speaks, and when he does there’s a sort of resigned, sardonic tone to his voice.

  Adailton has three penalties saved by the reserve keeper, Doardo. Oddo scores every time, a low, hard, thundering shot. They joke. They don’t seem to have any method. Perhaps, I think, there’s really no secret to playing football. You try to get close to the action, hoping for some revelation, but there is none to be had, just guys kicking the ball, businessmen spending money. Adailton runs up again, stabs the ball hard, waist height. Standing right behind the net now, I see how impossible it is for the keeper to make contact. The posts are so far apart, the penalty spot so near! Yet Doardo does it again. His glove tips the ball round the post. Perhaps I’ve been too hard on this boy. Perhaps one day he will make the vital save that keeps us in Serie A.

  Massimiliano comes over and warns me that I probably won’t be allowed to watch the Vicenza–Bari game with the team. ‘The Mister likes to be alone with the team at these moments.’ I’m disappointed. ‘Ask him,’ Professor Agnolin encourages me in the car.

  ‘Can I see the game with you?’ I ask Perotti back at the hotel. Again he has his slightly dazed, worried look, as if there were no moment of the day when he is not trying to arrive at some impossible solution to his selection problems. ‘Sure,’ he says. It seems he can’t imagine why I should think I might be excluded.

  So after lunch we file into the TV lounge. I have the stern and handsome Ferron on my left, the young Doardo on my right. Perotti is just two seats away. I’m expecting that every now and then the coach will point out things to his men, tell them to make a mental note for some future game. They’ll be planning the appropriate strategy to use, I tell myself, when they meet them. I’m intrigued. I feel privileged to be here. But nothing. Absolutely nothing. The twenty-odd men watch an irretrievably dull game in total silence. I’m hugely disappointed.

  ‘Filth!’ Foschi announces coming to the dinner table that evening. ‘Take it away.’ This of a dish of antipasti. ‘Filth.’ He puts his elbows on the table and sits forward aggressively. ‘What have you got, waiter?’

  The rest of us have already ordered. Foschi is late. He has been talking with his opposite number in the Lecce staff about players to buy and sell. While the fans love to hate each other, the managers are all doing business together.

  The waiter parrots a long list of dishes as Italian waiters will. The fish and fowl are in his mind, much as Prandelli would see a series of overlapping triangles all down the wing. ‘Is the bass fresh?’ Foschi demands. He has hollows under bright eyes. ‘Signore, sì.’ ‘Fresh from the fridge, you mean?’ The waiter is patient. His list is long. He finishes with the various meats. There is foal steak, beef carpaccio. ‘Bring me a cappuccino,’ Foschi says brutally and puts his head on his hands.

  Perotti suggests a minestrone. Foschi waits until the waiter is perhaps ten feet away then calls him back. ‘A minestrone.’ Five minutes later, the waiter brings it together with a plate of fresh basil leaves. ‘What are these?’ Foschi demands. ‘Take that filth away.’ The waiter does so, winking at the others. Everybody is chuckling. Perotti and Foschi begin to talk about their minestrone. ‘Not a bad minestrone,’ Perotti is saying. ‘Filth,’ Foschi says. He’s extremely nervous, but hamming it too. The players are eating quietly behind us. A more subdued group you couldn’t imagine. ‘You haven’t put enough parmesan on,’ Perotti says. Then Perotti calls the waiter to tell him to take the wine away. ‘This wine is awful.’ The waiter does so. Perotti orders a different bottle. ‘Much nicer with the parmesan.’ Foschi agrees. Then when the waiter comes back with the wine, he says, ‘You know, waiter, this minestrone is really excellent. I don’t think I’ve ever had such an extraordinary minestrone. I can’t thank you enough for recommending it.’

  Wondering when Agnolin is going to tell me that this is just a way of dealing with stress, I ask Foschi, ‘Do you think I should try some minestrone myself?’ He stops mid-spoonful, looks at me as if he’d only just realised I was there. ‘Waiter,’ he hollers across the restaurant. ‘Waiter, another plate of minestrone for the Englishman. But none of that filthy basil.’ So despite the fact that I’ve already eaten my pasta, I’m now back on minestrone. ‘Fantastic,’ Foschi insists shaking his head with wonderful earnestness. ‘The secret is in the parmesan, the quantity of the parmesan.’

  As soon as I have the plate in front of me, he begins to spoon on cheese for me. ‘Enough!’ ‘No, Mister Parks, you need more.’ He’s extremely earnest. ‘You need more.’ ‘Enough!’ But I. let him do it. A huge coagulating slick of parmesan is sinking heavily into the soup. ‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Foschi demands as I dip in my spoon. I reserve judgment. I pretend to be thinking. ‘Isn’t it marvellous?’ I won’t be swayed. ‘Give me time.’ As I expected, it’s a completely ordinary vegetable soup. ‘Oh don’t eat it if you don’t like it,’ Foschi shouts. Everybody is laughing. The waiter is laughing. Agnolin is laughing. Massimiliano is laughing. ‘Not bad,’ I finally decide. I pause. ‘Except for the parmesan. The parmesan is stale.’ ‘Stale! The parmesan? Waiter, this parmesan is stale!’

  Right at that moment, something echoes in the back of my mind. ‘Autista! Autista di merda! Turn off the light. Autista, shame on you, why did you turn off that light? Steer straight, autista. Accelerate! Slow down!’

  Driver and waiter play the same part: punch-bag for stress release. Prompted by this reflection, I look at my watch and remark, ‘The brigate will be in their coach. They’ll already be on their way.’ But the comment is lost. No one’s interested. ‘I’ve some good sleeping pills if you need them,’ Perotti is telling Foschi. But Foschi, who previously complained that he didn’t sleep last night, now claims he has the best sleeping pills anybody ever invented. Again he turns to me. ‘You want to try one.’ He pulls a huge pill out of a box in his pocket, it’s almost an inch in diameter, frightening. He begins to describe how they work. Nothing for ten minutes, then sudden and unexpected unconsciousness. ‘Lasts eight hours. No after-effects. If you want one I’ll give you one.’

  I decline.

  The evening anticipo is at 8.45.Juventus–Fiorentina. Disappointingly, most of the players have already gone to bed. Only six or seven file into the lounge for what should be a much more interesting game. The policemen who are supposed to be guarding us from the attacks of opposing fans come in to watch. Sitting alone right at the back, Perotti predicts a three–nil win to Juventus. After ten minutes Fiorentina are two–nil up. He goes off to bed.

  ‘You need a camomile tea,’ Fiorini tells Foschi. The older man seems genuinely worried by the sports director’s nervousness. Foschi turns to me. ‘Do you want a camomile?’ ‘I’d rather have a whisky.’ ‘A whisky, bring this man a whisky, waiter, at once!’ As he speaks, I’m filled with an enormous affection for Foschi. ‘Terim [Fiorentina’s coach] is one of the luckiest men in the world,’ he grumbles. The game is sparkling, electric. ‘We could do with a bit of luck ourselves,’ I say. ‘Taci,’ he says quickly, putting a finger to his lips. ‘Taci!’
Shush.

  The game finishes three-all and afterwards I’m left taking an evening walk on my own again, the only man not to go to bed before ten. I think of the fans who will be travelling all night in the most uncomfortable conditions. Yet they seem to have so much more fun than the players. I wish I was with them.

  Scaramanzia

  After weeks of scrupulous market research, Attilio Perotti has been chosen as the right man for the forthcoming advertising campaign for the Sweet Dreams Camomile Tea. Go for it, Attilio!

  Aiooogalapagos

  ‘OW ARR YOO thees morning?’

  Agostino Speggiorin tells me he’s learning English. It’s Sunday morning, the game is just a few hours away. In the lobby the players seem even more inert and listless than ever, sprawled over armchairs and sofas.

  ‘OK, I’ll give you a quick lesson,’ I tell Agostino at the breakfast table. It’s an excuse to fire a series of questions.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘I am from Vicenza.’

  ‘Like Pastorello.’

  ‘Like Pastorello.’

  Agostino is tall and gives the impression of being a little stiff, as if every move were studied. He looms over me, standing with his hand on the back of the chair. ‘Sit down,’ I insist. ‘Speak some English.’

  He sits straight-backed, concentrating fiercely. ‘I live on my own in a flat in Vicenza.’

  ‘And how long have you been there?’

  His story is typical of so many who work in football. He was himself a player in the lower divisions, for Treviso. Then he was transferred; his new club was bought and sold; suddenly no one wanted him. He went home. For a while he couldn’t bear football. He studied for the appropriate certificates and became a gym teacher. He loves teaching. Then he began to scout for Verona. He tells me about scouting. At short notice you are told to go to Stockholm, to Madrid, to see a player. You set off at once. You watch a game, write a report. For example, he had suggested the Vicenza centre-forward Toni to Verona years back when the boy was only sixteen. The president at the time responded to his positive report by sending a friend, actually his barber, to watch the boy. The barber thought Toni was useless. Agostino is full of contempt. ‘You have to understand potential and character. Toni was too tall to have total control of his body at that age. But already you could see how intelligently he moved, you could see he had enormous determination. Now he’s worth a fortune.’