I keep two books that were given to me for my tenth birthday, stuff from forty-five years ago. Both from Edi-Grafica, a publishing house of which I have lost track. The first is by Franco Ferrara, The goal as a fairy tale, a biography of Ciccio Graziani. I loved Graziani but I was amazed and irritated that there wasn’t one on Paolino Pulici, the totem of my childhood. The other is by Giglio Panza, Torino and its legend: I have to be careful how I handle it, I have read it and reread it, worn out, the pages risk remaining in my hand. Granata names lost over time: Antonio Janni, Julio Libonatti, Adolfo Baloncieri. That stilnovist sonnet that begins like this: Bacigalupo, Ballarin, Maroso… Love is an unsustainable phenomenon for the soul and in fact love, when it arrives, doesn’t just arrive: it overwhelms. I was overwhelmed. In Panza’s book there is a photo of the Basilica of Superga taken from above, a white arrow drawn as the graphics of the time allowed, to indicate where the plane that seventy-five years ago obliterated it from the face of the city came from and where it was headed. earth, to eternalize it in the epic, the team of the invincibles. The stilnovist sonnet which continued like this: Grezar, Rigamonti, Castigliano… Death does not erase love, it makes it irreparable. I looked at the photo, and when I see it again I look at it again, with amazement: it was the sacral epicenter of my love for Taurus. It was the arrow that counted: the arrow did not stop at the site of the crash, it continued and, forever, the sonnet continued: Menti, Loik, Gabetto, Mazzola, Ossola.
I no longer follow Taurus because I love him. I freed myself from a love preserved by inertia, so the love for the Bull who no longer exists survives better. Sometimes I betray my purpose because just reading the word Turin reveals a catalog of emotions to me. The word Turin coupled with the word Juventus seems like a work of art to me: Turin-Juventus, Juventus-Turin. Like a painting that, when it is a masterpiece, explodes out of the frame. If we lost the derby, a scream would drum inside me – Bull! Bull! Bull! – which was the refusal to surrender and already the beginning of the recovery. And we won derbies. Pulici and Graziani. The three goals from Dossena-Bonesso-Torrisi overturned a 0-2 score in five minutes. Aldone Serena’s last-second header from Leo Junior’s corner. Casagrande’s brace on two assists from Martin Vazquez. At the Delle Alpi stadium, with Paolino Poggi’s left foot that eliminated Juventus from the Italian Cup, I fell down the steps, knocking down six or seven fans and immediately found them on top of me, I thought they were going to pay me, but instead to multiply the fury of ecstasy .
Sometimes, I was saying, I betray my purpose. I need to see the garnet of the shirts and the green of the pitch. The last time was a couple of months ago. Turin-Salernitana. It was the thirtieth of the first half. I saw the quarter of an hour until half-time and in fifteen minutes Torino never entered the area, they moved the ball from left to right with short passes, then with short passes from right to left, and it was over first half and I asked myself: what am I doing here? I turned off the TV. I then learned the final result: zero nil.
I recognize the merits of a Toro in Serie A for a good decade to president Urbano Cairo, almost always in mid-table, not in a pre-bankruptcy state as happened before him. But I’m bored. Love either shakes your insides or it’s not love. It’s not about results, not for me. It’s not important to win or lose. The important thing is to love. And I, guys, went through the dark years of Ipoua and Cammarata, of Jurcic and Scarlato, of Osmanovski and Nunziata, and you tell me if it’s not love. Love is having hunger for the present and hope for the future and I no longer have them.
I don’t know if it’s me who has changed or the Bull. Probably me. When the years pass and the remaining time grows thin, the instinct comes to manage it better and I get bored for two hours in front of the TV, trying to get excited for lineups that change half the season from season to season, pretending to myself that let everything be as before, garnet for garnet and green for green, it seems like a waste of time to me. I don’t even feel like recalling the trite rhetoric, the famous tremendism or the irreducibility of the Bull to death registered in Superga, the metaphysics of the Philadelphia, the field of the Invincibles (Bacigalupo, Ballarin, Maroso…) on which Claudio trained Sala and Zaccarelli, a story that has evaporated into a legend that can no longer be passed down: it is all buried by the distance of years. Who of those good guys, who wears the grenade shirt like a summer shirt, would be able to recite the Stilnovist sonnet? And why should he know how to act? Why should he keep a memory that is not his?
Yes, it’s my fault. Before, I lived in the certainty of the elective affinity between me and the players. I knew I was as much a Taurus as they knew. My stormy feelings were their same feelings. My love was their same enormous heartbreaking love. My stilnovist sonnet was their song, no more, no less. Today there is no certainty. It’s like you look at Taurus and it’s not Taurus. I want to see Toro, I think I see Toro and instead in front of me there is another team, they have a shirt that resembles the grenade shirt but is not.
My fault even if the love that ends is not a fault and certainly not exclusive. The work of art – Turin-Juventus, Juventus-Turin – is now a dissolving image. I have to think back to Pecci, Cravero, Scifo, even Quagliarella, because Toro is still drumming inside me! Bull! Bull! Otherwise I hear a stupid silence, at most the phone ringing for the message from my friend Federico Monga with the score of the derbies at the time in Cairo: one victory, six draws, twenty-three defeats.
Hi Taurus, I don’t love you anymore because I want to love you again. I look at the photo of Superga from Panza’s book, the arrow continues forever and forever I will recite the sonnet: Bacigalupo, Ballarin, Maroso… Maybe one day, who knows…
