I Think Therefore I Play (13 page)

“Why don’t you try doing that again, Andrea,” came a provocative voice from behind. This was now a battle of two against one. Me on one side, the kit-store guy and the ghost of Juninho Pernambucano firmly on the other.

“Okay then, spoilsport. Just you watch,” I said.

Up I stepped and unleashed a carbon copy of the previous free-kick. It was a thing of absolute beauty, stylistically impeccable. I lined up another five strikes and it was the same story every time. By now it was official: I’d cracked it. The secret was no more.

In essence, the ball needs to be struck from underneath using your first three toes. You have to keep your foot as straight as possible and then relax it in one fell swoop. That way, the ball doesn’t spin in the air, but does drop rapidly towards the goal. That’s when it starts to rotate. And that, in a nutshell, is my
maledetta
.
⁵¹

When it comes off exactly as I want, there’s no way of keeping it out. It’s specifically designed to head over the wall before taking a direction that nobody can predict. For me, the best feeling in life is watching the ball fly into the net after it whizzes a couple of centimetres over the heads of the defenders. They can almost reach it, but not quite. They can read the maker’s name, but they can’t stop it going in. Sometimes a pinch of sadism is the ingredient that makes victory taste that little bit sweeter.

The further away from goal I am, the better. As the distance increases, so does the effect I can impart. The greater the space between me and the keeper, the quicker the ball tends to drop as it hones in on its target.

I can obviously mix things up a bit, throw in a few little tricks to make every free-kick unique, but the underlying concept never changes. Scoring from a dead-ball brings me massive satisfaction. It sets me up as an example for other players to follow, copy and perhaps even emulate over the course of time. For them, I’m a Juninho Pernambucano 2.0, a Brazilian with a Brescia accent.

I’ve never told anyone, but my ambition is to become the leading all-time scorer of free-kicks in Serie A. It’s a goal that I’ve been working towards for several years now. When I was a kid, I’d stick a sofa in front of our living-room window and use it as a wall for shooting practice with a sponge ball. Nine times out of 10, the ball would fly over the sofa and end up between the glass and the actual wall: right where I’d aimed it.

Back in those days, I’d buy the Gazzetta dello Sport just to get my hands on the videos they sold with the paper showing the best free-kicks from the great No.10s. I’d press play and Baggio, Zico and Platini would spring into action. Great invention, the remote control – one push of a button and your imagination runs wild.

I can’t abide the cliché “only the team’s success matters – I don’t care about my own”. It’s the tiresome complaint of those who have no personal ambition, whether for want of class or lack of character. For me, the team counts a huge amount but if I forgot about myself, I’d be doing my team-mates a disservice. Many individuals make a team, just as many dreams make a triumph. And if you’re really lucky, they make history as well.

Although free-kicks are my passion, I’ve never had, or asked for, a bonus relating to the number I score. That would be a step too far. Easy money, in all probability, but not a road I’ve ever wanted to go down. Even if I did have a clause written into my contract, it’s not something I’d obsess about, unlike a lot of strikers with their goals. All of them have bonuses triggered when they reach a certain number and it can make them very selfish. That’s in their nature anyway, but having those huge extra sums dangled in front of them only serves to amplify the trait. I suppose it would be weird if it had the opposite effect. I can put up with strikers even if they’re a bit capricious. Often I downright adore them.

One part of my job I’ll never learn to love is the pre-match warm-up. I hate it with every fibre of my being. It actually disgusts me. It’s nothing but masturbation for conditioning coaches, their way of enjoying themselves at the players’ expense.

I’ve no doubt it helps you avoid injury, but it’s still the worst part of our working week: a 15-minute pain in the arse. Quarter of an hour completely wasted. Most of the time I’ll be thinking about something else as I go through the motions. I end up pretty much walking: my way of protesting against that unbearable procession. It’s even worse if you’re playing on the road, because then you’ve got to listen to the insults of the home fans.

I’ve absolutely no interest in jogging to warm up my muscles. The muscle that counts the most is the heart, and mine’s always set at 100 degrees, burning with positive energy. I’ve explained my outlook to the various coaches I’ve worked with but none of them pays any attention. They’ll look at me like I’ve just arrived from Mars, particularly when I suggest we also get rid of the warm-up before training.

If it was up to me, I’d have us playing straight away, during the week as well as on our Saturday and Sunday match-days. In the league, the Coppa Italia, the Champions League, whatever. Even the World Cup, which I managed to win despite doing no more than walk about during the 900 seconds that preceded the games against Ghana, USA, Czech Republic, Australia, Ukraine, Germany and France.

I hate the warm-up so much I need to do something to avoid getting depressed. And so I’ll run a mental countdown, continually reminding myself that I must stay calm; that in a few minutes, the torture will be over.

Maybe it’s a phobia. But the way I see it, I’m simply reacting to an injustice being inflicted on beauty. If you’ve got Bar Refaeli
⁵²
lying naked in front of you, you can’t just wink at her and say: “Wait there, I’ll be with you in 15 minutes.” All you’ll do in that quarter of an hour is think of her. You’ll hold everything back until you’ve got her in your arms and can throw yourself into the moment.

It’s exactly the same when you’re about to play Real Madrid, Barcelona or any other superpower. All you want to do is get stuck into them, without any waiting around. You can’t take your eyes off them and you begin to drool. You get wound up, think about what you’re doing and then you get downright angry. Because you realise you’re just wasting time.

 

50.
A master of the dead ball, Juninho Pernambucano excelled with Lyon domestically and in the Champions League and won 40 caps for Brazil

51.
Maledetta
literally means ‘cursed’ or ‘damned’, mirroring how the opposition goalkeeper tends to feel

52.
An Israeli model who has fronted campaigns for leading global brands

Chapter 17

Alessandro Del Piero gets where I’m coming from. It’s only on his face that I’ve seen the same sort of look that disfigures mine during the pre-match warm-up. His last year at Juventus sticks in my mind as a kind of sporting agony; the drawn out death of an intense love that’s destined to disappear, second by second, piece by piece, until it’s nothing but one-way affection. And if there’s only fondness on one side, the whole thing becomes a bit pointless.

He wasn’t playing and he was suffering as a result. It was eating him up inside, and that unhappiness was obvious on the exterior. He looked like he wanted to smash up the world and everything in it: his face said it all about the horror he was living.

He tried to disguise his true feelings, but couldn’t quite pull it off. In this life, you’re either a man or an actor, there’s nothing in between. Alessandro’s attempt to put on a brave face proved pretty terrible and, as such, the example he set was priceless. He’s a one-off and the same guy now he’s always been. The fact that Sydney’s a 24-hour flight from Turin hasn’t changed him one bit. He’s a champion at home and abroad.

He suffered like crazy sitting on the bench that final year. Not letting him near a ball was the worst kind of punishment for him. He had a full season of being sent to bed with no dinner and no No.10. All he got was a pair of black-and-white striped pyjamas without a name on the back. The classic garb of a prisoner who hasn’t been put to death but is condemned to permanent exile.

Never once did Alessandro complain in front of his team-mates; he always showed great dignity. You wouldn’t see much of him in the dressing room during the week – he had his own personal trainer to put him through his paces because, after all, the perfect engine deserves special care and attention. In the mornings, he’d always arrive before everyone else, get changed and hole himself up in a little gym a few metres along from the one used by the rest of the squad. He’d join the main group only when the balls appeared and it was time to work on the technical stuff. When we needed him, he was there, and we were very aware of his presence. We were all pretty sad that a true champion like him had to leave, particularly when the team (
his
team) had just started winning again.

Even though we knew how the story would end, it was still upsetting. After all, we’re talking about one of the most historic standard bearers in Juventus history. And when I say historic, I’m talking about his influence as well as his age.

I don’t know exactly what went on between him and president Agnelli. I couldn’t tell you which internal mechanism stopped working or what little bug got into the system – I’ve never thought it appropriate to ask. I’ve got huge respect for both men, and there must be a valid reason for them having reached the end of the line. It’s purely their business, a private matter that all started with differing views on a contract extension that never actually materialised.

It’s a shame really, because Del Piero still had plenty to offer Juventus. A guy like him is always going to come in handy. Great people and exemplary professionals are the sort of folks I’d want at my side 24 hours a day and Alessandro is both those things.

It’s not by chance that he’s had such a world-class career. Even in those latter days, he’d still put on a masterclass of nobility whenever he got some game-time. The very essence of beauty presented in summary form: a few pages, a brief look, and you’d learned the lesson. Those moments were his chance to become a child again, even if he wasn’t far away from hitting 40. More than once, he cried in front of everyone, holding nothing back. Just as a kid would, in fact.

After his penultimate appearance in a Juventus jersey (a home game against Atalanta in May 2012), he was finally overwhelmed by all the emotions he’d managed to keep a lid on up till then. His ego, his desire to be involved, that need to feel like a true
bianconero
. He flooded the dressing room with tears, and we did the same, both with him and for him. And then we said goodbye before he headed off to Sydney.

Alessandro chose the other side of the world to start over and carry on his career. It couldn’t have gone any other way, really. If he’d stayed in Italy or moved to another league close by, he’d have just ended up feeling terribly homesick. Juventus is an almost physical attraction for him: it’s like putting one magnet next to another.

Thanks to my pathological devotion to the Italy jersey, people say I’m a player who belongs to everyone. Sometimes I’ll find opposition fans applauding me when we play on the road. Del Piero went one step further: supporters of other teams put him on a pedestal because he was a one-club man. They loved his dedication; the fact that he’d married a cause and stayed faithful, becoming something more than a mere footballer, as well as one of the all-time greats.

Earning that sort of reaction is nothing short of miraculous in an age when Juventus have started winning again and are thus widely disliked. The problem is that, all too often, sporting rivalry descends into the most boorish kind of hate. Pure ignorance throws open the doors to some quite barbaric behaviour.

In other countries, when the team buses arrive it’s a truly joyous spectacle. You walk into the ground with a throng of fans on either side; the kids are all happy and so are we. Only very rarely do we need blacked-out windows to travel to the stadium.

In Italy, by contrast, away games are a nightmare. The journey between the team hotel and the ground is like an assault course. I’m sick of needing a police escort, of having cop cars in front and behind with their lights flashing and sirens blaring. The police should be dealing with more important things than worrying about us. Anti-mafia judges deserve to have guardian angels protecting them; we footballers can do without. In an ideal world, that is, but sadly not in Serie A.

We’re way behind, and we don’t seem to realise that the further we fall, the deeper and narrower the well has become. Smoke bombs, tear gas, sticks, rocks, bolts, plates... we’ve had everything thrown at us in our time. There was a game away to Napoli during my second season at Juventus when I thought things were going to end really badly. I’ve rarely been engulfed by a hell on earth quite like it. Hundreds of people came to wait for us outside our hotel and started throwing insults as soon as we tried to board the bus. I can live with that and I can just about live with them chucking eggs as well, but the situation deteriorated quickly.

As we got closer to the San Paolo, more and more objects rained down on us. We’d become the bullseye in a perverse game of Hit the
Juventino
. A few guys took refuge on the floor of the bus, particularly after a brick struck the window where Kwadwo Asamoah was sitting. Thankfully, the glass broke out the way, otherwise we could have been looking at a real tragedy. A surreal silence reigned in the bus thereafter. We’d realised that we weren’t travelling for free. The risk of paying for my ticket with my life does trouble me from time to time at night when I’m trying to get to sleep.

Who can guarantee that one day, instead of a brick, someone’s not going to pull out a gun? How do you control hundreds of people at the side of road, whose sole objective is to harm us? Who is willing to bet against there being one madman who is just that little bit nastier that the rest?