I Think Therefore I Play (6 page)

I was happy to help Daniele, and now it’s his turn to have my back on the pitch as well. Every time I see him, I tell him the same thing. “Dero, I’m going to retire from international football after the 2014 World Cup. And I want to play in the final again.”

It’s a pity that Sandrino can’t be there. He got off at Ausfahrt.

 

11.
Ultras are the self-styled most passionate, vocal and committed supporters of a team. Although the term can have negative connotations, it is not synonymous with ‘hooligans’

12.
A leading figure on the Italian rock/pop scene in the 1970s and ’80s. Died in 1998, but his songs remain popular

13.
After beating Ghana 2–0 in their opening group fixture (with Pirlo scoring and being named Man of the Match), Italy took the lead against USA through Alberto Gilardino. A Cristian Zaccardo own goal saw the States draw level, before De Rossi was sent off for crudely elbowing striker Brian McBride in the face (and drawing blood) as the pair jumped for a high ball. Despite USA suffering two red cards of their own and playing much of the second half with nine men, Italy couldn't force the win, with De Rossi bearing the brunt of the public’s ire

14.
Maria De Filippi hosts an Italian TV show called C’è Posta per Te (There’s post for you)

Chapter 7

At his first press conference as Inter coach, Jose Mourinho surprised everyone by introducing himself in perfect Italian. “I’m no
pirla
,”
¹⁵
he said.

I, on the other hand, definitely am. Pirla and Pirlo, both the feminine and masculine forms, just to cover all the bases. My two Roman mates, Nesta and De Rossi, would call me a
cazzaro
.
¹⁶

My face, with its fixed expression, doesn’t let on what I’m thinking. But therein lies the beauty. I can make up the most crazy stories, say the most ridiculous things to my team-mates and everyone thinks I’m being deadly serious. They don’t realise what’s happening and I have a whale of a time. I’ll be smiling inside, but outwardly completely impassive as I plot my next joke. And sometimes it’s cost me a slap, particularly when Rino Gattuso was around.

With him not being a man of letters, a distinguished orator or a member of the Accademia della Crusca,
¹⁷
whenever Rino opened his mouth the dressing room turned into the Rio Carnival. People would be blowing raspberries, making trumpet noises, doing the conga. Always the same reaction. We’d never let him finish before we started taking the piss. It was the Maracana at Milanello (or Coverciano), and he’d be speaking Portuguese without even knowing. To be fair, it’s the same story with Italian where Rino is concerned.

I’d call him
terrone
¹⁸
and he’d hit me. To get my own back, I’d nick his phone and send a bunch of texts to Ariedo Braida, our general manager. This one time, Rino de Janeiro, like me, was waiting for his contract to be renewed. I did the negotiating on his behalf by means of a single message. “Dear Ariedo, if you give me what I want, you can have my sister.”

Rino found out and gave me a beating before ringing up Braida. “It’s just one of Pirlo’s stupid jokes,” he said. I’ve always wondered if the response was, “what a pity”.

Before Italy games, De Rossi would hide under Rino’s bed and wait. He’d be there for anything up to half an hour. Gattuso would come in, brush his teeth, stick on his leopard-print pyjamas, get into bed, take out a book and look at the pictures. Just as he was about to fall asleep, Daniele would reach up from under the bed and grab his sides, while I’d burst out of the wardrobe like the worst kind of lover, making horrendous noises. Rino took it really well, despite risking a massive heart attack. First he’d beat up Daniele and then he’d do the same to me. Just to prove he was even handed.

Another time we gave him a soaking with a fire extinguisher. A draw away to the Republic of Ireland had been enough to secure our qualification for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and so the last group game, against Cyprus in Parma four days later, had become almost like a friendly. Pretty much meaningless, and that’s exactly how we treated it.

Lippi gave us a night off in Florence, and almost all of us went out for dinner. Gattuso didn’t – he stayed at the team hotel. When we got back, we were quite drunk, actually very drunk, and we ended up chatting in the lounge. We weren’t tired, so we needed to find something to pass the time. Everyone had the same idea: “Let’s go and piss off Gattuso.”

He was already asleep, with his little nightcap on his head. On the way up the stairs to Rino’s room, De Rossi spotted a fire extinguisher. “I’m off to put out Gattuso,” he said. We knocked on the door and out Rino came, screwing his eyes up as he advanced. Daniele started spraying, covering him in every last drop before running off to hide in his room (i.e. our room). He left me at the mercy of that monster in its underpants, absolutely dripping with foam and shouting total gibberish. Listening to him, though, I knew he was beginning to wake up and regain his senses. I tried to escape, but I was already done for. When the guy on your shoulder is Gattuso and he’s out to do you harm, you can run as hard as you like, but he’ll always catch you. You could be a gazelle or a lion – it makes absolutely no difference.

With the door safely locked, De Rossi came over all bold. “What’s all this noise? I’m pretty sure I’ve heard something similar in the Bud Spencer and Terence Hill films.” For the record, the noise was Rino running me through his full repertoire of slaps.

He said goodnight and returned to his room. That’s how he is: he’s either playing or he’s back at camp. He doesn’t do crazy joy, isn’t interested in letting his concentration slide. He just can’t bear the thought of having left a stone unturned in the quest to win a game.

He’s also superstitious to a pretty disgusting degree. At the 2006 World Cup, because things were going well, he kept the same tracksuit on for more than a month. It was something like 40 degrees in Germany and he was going about dressed like a deep-sea diver. From round about the quarter-finals, he began to stink. Never mind a fire extinguisher – what he really needed was an industrial supply of lavender.

Rino’s always been my favourite target, top of the table by some distance. This despite the fact that on several occasions he’s tried to kill me with a fork. During meal times at Milanello, we’d invent all sorts to torment him and put him on the spot. When he got his verbs wrong (pretty much the whole time), we’d jump on him immediately. And then when he actually got them right, we’d make out that it was still wrong just to wind him up even more. Me, Ambrosini, Nesta, Inzaghi, Abbiati, Oddo: that was the group of bastards right there.

“Rino, how are you?”

“Bad. We got beat yesterday. I was better if we won.”

“Rino, try again. It’s ‘I’d be better if we’d won’.”

“But it’s the same thing.”

“Not exactly, Rino.”

“Fine then. I’d be better if we’d won.”

“Rino, just how ignorant are you? ‘I was better if we won.’ That’s how you say it.”

“But that’s what I said before.”

“What, Rino?”

“That thing about winning.”

“What thing, Rino? Can you repeat it?”

You could see the red mist coming down and he just wasn’t able to hide it. We could tell what was coming and so we’d commandeer all the knives. Gattuso would grab a fork and try to stick it in us. On more than one occasion, he struck his intended target and the fork sank into our skin. We were as soft as tuna; the kind you can cut with a breadstick. Some of us ended up missing games because of one of Rino’s fork attacks, even if the official explanation from the club was one of muscle fatigue.

We’d get out of his way when he got mad but once he’d calmed down and gone to his room, we’d come back out, pile up the sofas in front of the door and block his exit.

“Let me out – training starts in a while.”

“Deal with it,
terrone
.”

He’d then go crazy again, smashing up everything in sight. But even when he was angry, he was one of the good guys. I’ve always thought of him as being like a character from a film by Woody Allen, my favourite director of all time. I picture him with that No.8 shirt, foaming at the mouth as he tries to deliver lines like: “I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead. Not sick. Not wounded. Dead.” Or: “There’s nothing wrong with you that can’t be cured with a little Prozac and a polo mallet.”

Amongst other things, I’ve seen Rino catch and eat live snails for a bet. He really does belong in a film. I like to think of myself as a director, on the pitch and in life, and I’d never let an actor of his class pass me by.

You need pillars like him in the dressing room. Bodies get older but charisma doesn’t age. You run less, but you count for more, in terms of personality. Rino’s word was law at Milan, and anyone new to the club was aware that the first thing they’d have to do if they made a mistake was explain themselves to him. Just having that knowledge drastically reduced the chances of people fucking up. Back in the day, that’s how things worked, and even old Woody wouldn’t have been able to change the ending all that much.

Once upon a time, teams had players who were the very symbol of that club. Standard bearers. And clubs would make a point of holding onto every piece of the flag: the pole, the rope, the fabric, the prestige, the ability to catch the wind and, in some exceptional cases, make it change direction and intensity. Nowadays, the only thing that counts is saving money. It’s about cutting salaries that those same clubs had agreed.

When a club throws a tantrum, leaving out a player who’s refusing to take a wage cut, people often react on instinct. They’ll pass instant judgment: “Aah, typical rich guy, won’t let a single penny go. We normal folk go hungry and they want to hang on to their millions. They’re the real untouchables in this country; worse than politicians, that lot. What a bunch of tight gits they are: the more they have, the more they want.”

When I hear certain understandable gut reactions of that kind, a few questions come to mind. They’re not in any particular order, and I don’t know how intelligent they are, but here goes: did the directors have a gun to their head when they agreed that multi-million euro salary? Might it be the case that once they realised they’d got their sums wrong, they blamed it all on the player, always an easy sacrificial lamb?

How do people outside the dressing room know whether a player has to provide for a large family, give something back to parents who’ve made sacrifices for him in the past or pay off debts for relatives and friends? Are you telling me that the big cheeses, after organising all kinds of clandestine dinners and secret meetings to get a player to their club and then showering him with gold, can suddenly ask for it all back? Are they not the liars, those guys who, when it came down to it, weren’t capable of keeping their word? How can an employer change at will the terms of a contract that he himself set out?

It’s undeniable that we footballers are a fortunate bunch. But we’ve got our dignity. And at least from that point of view, nobody can call us
pirlas
.

 

15.
Term used in the Milan/Lombardy dialect roughly translating as ‘dickhead’. Can be used quasi-affectionately

16.
Term used in the Roman dialect to mean ‘stupid’

17.
An organisation that seeks to preserve the purity of the Italian language

18.
An offensive term meaning ‘peasant’ used by northern Italians against southerners

Chapter 8

I consider myself particularly fortunate: I know Antonio Conte. I’ve worked with a lot of coaches in my time, and he’s the one who surprised me the most. One little speech, a few simple words, was all it took for him to win me over. Me and the whole of Juventus, a planet we disembarked on pretty much at the same time.

On the first day of our training camp up in the mountains at Bardonecchia, he got everyone together in the gym to introduce himself. He had some venom ready for us and the altitude wasn’t causing him any trouble. I suppose that’s just how vipers roll.

“Lads, we’ve finished seventh each of the last two seasons. Crazy stuff; absolutely appalling. I’ve not come here for that. It’s time we stopped being crap.”

After only a few minutes, he’d stripped away all the mystery. One thing in particular was very obvious: he was like a bear with a sore head. As we Italians say, ‘
Aveva un diavolo per capello
’ – ‘he’d a devil for hair’, and if the hair was fake then the devil was 100% real and made from a material that’s impossible to replicate.

“Every single person here has performed badly over the last few seasons. We need to do whatever it takes to pull ourselves up and start being Juve again. Turning round this ship is not a polite request; it’s an order, a moral obligation. You guys need to do only one thing and it’s pretty simple: follow me.”

Our first impression was absolutely correct. When Conte speaks, his words assault you. They crash through the doors of your mind, often quite violently, and settle deep within you. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve found myself saying: “Hell, Conte said something really spot-on again today.”

“And listen carefully, boys, because I’m not finished. Get it into your heads that we must return to the levels where we belong, the ones that are written into the history of this club. It would be criminal for us not to finish in the top three this year.”

Naturally we won the
scudetto
at the first time of asking
¹⁹
and it was all down to him. The success was all his, a triumph of bloody mindedness that went beyond everyone’s expectations. It really couldn’t have gone any other way, given the example we had in front of us every day. Conte was like a man possessed, the very essence of Juventus burned deep into his soul.