Beppe Here are the edited highlights of a fixture from Herbert's last collection, The Laurelude. Literary tifosi will spot the Byronic pun on Beppo, the club-footed one's first foray into ottavo rima, the form of his masterpiece, Don Juan. The rest of you will already be flinging bulky anthologies of twentieth-century verse at the back of the head of the man taking the corner. Signori's stay at Sampdoria was short and miserable -- indeed Samp have now tumbled back into Serie B, and look stuck there for an extended stay. But before that happened Beppe went to Bologna to begin to revive his career, just as Baggio had done (and is continuing to do at Brescia). While he's not quite been that successful, he's certainly recovered much of his grace and poise over the past few seasons, and, thankfully, is scoring wonderful goals once more. He's made a bet with a rash journalist that he'll score 200 Serie A goals before retiring. Up to being injured in the opening weeks of the current campaign, he had scored 168. So another two years should sort that out. As Ray Wilkins memorably declared, 'Signori has all the tricks up his book.' |
| 'I believed
in the cupid I thought I'd kiss you for all my life I guess I'm just a little stupid now I'm going back to Rome' Frank Black Signori, man whose name confirms his status, Guiseppe -- Joseph -- player without fuss, a footballer who's filled with that afflatus that English footballers can just discuss, but Italy's as full of as a plate is of verdure from a region stuffed with suss and savour: Lazio, a name that seems best fitted to the better of Rome's teams. So why not raise a glass of white so blond it catches like his beard, his hunch of hair as he swoops down on passes, eels beyond the heavy red of Roma's backs: he'll dare a shot that skims across the keeper's pond and makes him seems all frog. And let me cheer his dance above the all-embracing dirt and praise the very colour of his shirt. It's neither sky nor sea -- too pastel, more the blue tone of those little swimming pools they build beside their villas, tempting for the would-be Anglo-Tuscan, he who drools for all Italia but must just explore the emptied wallet common to such fools. That wily paleness is the colour of the shirt he wore for Zeman and for Zoff -- and Erickson, but now my story spins, becomes Shakespearean, gains Terentian slants, with the exchanging of two Calcio twins. For from Sampdoria Erickson transplants Mancini, fifteen years the furious prince of Genoa, marcher from the field in tant- rums, back-heel master, forward whose huge grace means only he could take Signori's place. This Aztec cut left Samp without a soul and Lazio with forwards by the yard -- the six-yard box, that is, where, boot and jowl, they wheeled, bobbed and collided till the hard law of Fortuna meant another's goal gave Beppe's captaincy the reddest card: embarrassed squirming on the has-been's bench with just his buttocks and his teeth to clench. I love the way he lost, laconically handing back three goal leads, as though the like of Lazio don't need defensive play. I love the way he took one step to strike so no-one could predict a penalty. I love the way he would refuse to hike, but just mooched round that frantic moshing box then scored, or held up games to adjust his socks. In short I see I loved my would-be self -- in shorts, and poured in an Italian mould -- but still my kind of idiot, neither Guelph nor Ghibelline, not really, but controlled by one huge need: be loved or hit the shelf; excel but never show -- and don't be sold. It drives you like a duty if in common with Beppe you can recognise this daemon. Be loved, not be admired or famous, be the one who's held to hold the game together, not even by their conscious mind, but see the way the team, your family, all tether themselves to you, or gather in your lee as though you sheltered them from ugly weather, like something without failings they could know: what could he do on losing this but go? And here's the strangest twist of the stilleto for who should need him more just then than Samp? Still mourning their Mancini's allegretto -- that galvaniser of the park whose ramp- ant glance itself could kick balls through the net-o. And so you flew north, to ease Sampdoria's cramp. Heart-swopping stuff, though neither of you clicked, both being footballs fate herself has kicked. So, goal-less in Genoa, has your art deserted you? How does the bella game look now, Ovidian Beppe, forced apart from Nesta and Gottardi, not one name you know to slide that nutmeg you could dart behind defenders to convert and tame: the ball a pagan only you have blessed, a comet being shown its proper nest. Bereft of Boksic, tragic in attack, for one whole season by your twisting side, tall and direct where you seemed small and slack, but while you struck his every kick went wide -- he did the same at Juve till, bought back, he hit a sudden match of shot and stride, and now, when you are gone, his every week's a fusion of his chutzpah and technique. And last there's Per-Luigi, never dux while Boksic and Mancini are on form, but still the stealer at that breathless crux of goals that push your old team from the swarm in which Sampdoria flounders. There's no pax romana that can heal your parting from a striking partner so insightful that you seemed to land on four feet like one cat. And now Favalli's led them to a cup the lees of which you must drink every night: it is the case that other men pick up those trophies that we once assumed we might; they live in places where we thought to stop, but now can see propelled us on a flight without a destination we would name, so we say 'Ave failure, vale fame.' |
| If you don't believe me about those
goals, you can see them here: http://www.raisport.rai.it/mcalcio/989a/c00028.htm And
if you've ever wanted to know why Bologna's called 'Il
Grosso', try this site:
A neat chip back to gli Azzurri, no it's a thundering volley back to Obsessions! If you came running down the wing from Biographerama, you may be expecting to receive the aforementioned Laurelude on the toe of your outstretched boot. |
