A slice of Iacovone it already imposes itself in the background. Two boys and a little girl cut the pitch carpet leading to the stadium with small but quick strides. A he and a she hum a chorus “lalalalalalalalalala…”. The little voices delicately decorate the air, evidently exhausting the third who, now exhausted by that chant that has been going on for only they know how long, desperately urges the two to silence with a complaint. The two choristers, as if awakened by a spell, look at each other with understanding, ignore the complaint of their little companion, interpreting it as an incitement: with the help of their arms their singing increases in decibels “… SCORES FOR US, WE MUST WIN!”. An adult behind them is struggling to keep up: “Why are you running?”
This question is rhetorical, the answer probably less so. What turbocharges those childish steps is that energy that has been flowing through a territory and those who live there for a few weeks. Even if it cannot be seen and perhaps for this reason not even described, perhaps it can be touched, but its signs certainly invade the atmosphere. What moves that little trot full of anticipation and inflamed with excitement is the invisible hand of the market: the tangible force of collective desire.
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The stadium appears packed like I haven’t remembered it for a long time and in great shape. We settle on the curve, in the lower sector, in the usual place which we find occupied by many new faces instead of many others who always accompany us, but we manage to make room for ourselves and carve out our own opening. Finally we use the phones for a good reason: after some vicissitudes, from the central balcony comes the invitation to use the light of the phones for an unusual choreography as the teams enter the field. The whole stadium accepts the invitation, except for a segment of the steps, in its distinctive way, and another, in front, in the stands, occupied by about a hundred people from Vicenza, who make themselves noticed by waving their red and white in the wind. From the point of view of the singing repertoire, we opt for a thrilling entry into the field, with “tu, solo tu” which is a bit similar to the most famous Anglo-Saxon songs in terms of singing power, rhythm, words and attachment and which from the TV, the commentator will say, recalls “a Champion’s League atmosphere”.
Before the match the loud voice of the fans highlighted that Vicenza was potentially in difficulty in the first few minutes as they hadn’t played for two weeks, perhaps, it was said, they might have had difficulty getting into the rhythm of the game and, therefore, they were hopefully dreaming of an aggressive start. When the mind flies it has strange dreams, I longed for a 2-0 in the first quarter of an hour thinking that at that point I could even die satisfied with the wealth of beautiful experiences in life. Curva’s singing choice seems driven by the same drool: some of the best cartridges of her singing artillery are fired right away, almost with the force of desperation. With the phones out of the way, we start with a typical, very charged “when the scream will rise” with the usual consequent “Taranto!”, and then, without a moment’s breath, “Score for us, we have to win!”. Only now that I am writing these words do I think about the full emotion that little boy and girl could have felt, the kind that forges your spirit, making you emerge from the shell of infantile self-referentiality, or exalting it in forming a collective body. Moments so intense that they make time dense, making it relative beyond the quantitative mechanics of the dictatorship of the clock. In fact, when Vicenza scores and all our desiring strategy melts like the glaciers of the Alps during late capitalism, it is only the 11th but I would have sworn it was at least the 20th. The Venetians scored from a free kick, imposing on the entire rossoblù environment the need for the feat of a mountain to climb hard. In a predictable and inevitable coincidence between the physiological decline of the stadium’s incitement in a radically moody square, we hear the Vicenza choir for a few very long seconds and we realize that it’s not just us that exists and in a rare democratic glimpse from the stadium we realize that it exists also the Other. We won’t hear from them anymore because it Iacovone, even if weakened, will lend itself to a moving demonstration of support but it was a particular moment that made us understand that, despite the limitation of tickets which mortified the participation of organized groups, we were dealing with a square like Vicenza which it has little or nothing in common with the C series. A match and a setting that had the tasty flavor of football that matters.
I think back to the words said by a guy at the entrance: “amma fa nu gol almen?”, will we at least score a goal? In fact, the first two games of the playoffs both featured the result with glasses, useful for continuing the journey and freeing the body from suffering only at the final whistle. But the goal, well, the goal, is another story. It is the minimum and maximum term of football, it is its sign par excellence, it is its main characteristic, it is what, in some ways, really counts. Seeing the ball go into the bag is an emotion that has few equals in life. And those words make me think about how important the imprint left by that moment could be, that moment in which the leather touches the net and the stadium explodes like a river in flood revealing all the emotion in the features of the body that for thousands they come together in the most sensible chaos I can imagine. And yet this time too we are left with a scream strangled in our throat and a charge of adrenaline that is difficult to get rid of. There is a little girl who has a scarf tied on her head like a fighter’s headband. She struggled throughout, truly, the entire match without interruption, without claiming to be an example or with the judgmental attitude of everyone around who often stopped to contemplate. She also joins the collective declaration that greets the team: “for our city!”. The imprint that the ball’s desiring machine leaves may be invisible and conjectural but it leaves scattered signs that we want to be grasped.
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Once the match is over, while a chorus rises up which, despite the disappointing result, invites them to load the buses with beer and invade Vicenza, the stadium slowly empties, the ultras, and with them other incurables, remain to enjoy what could be the last moments on those steps as we know them. While the river heads towards the exits, the still illuminated spotlights focus on the small groups, gathered around flags and two poles, a perfect metaphor of the Gruyere city described by Alessandro Leogrande in his From the rubble. Chronicles on the southern front:
«Anyone who takes the car and takes a tour around Taranto, throughout Taranto, around the enormous perimeter of the city of Taranto, has before his eyes a torn city, an exploded city, which has expanded urbanistically without sense around the denial of historic center, a city that quickly reached 250,000 inhabitants and now has only 200,000. But this is only the data that he photographs of the officially resident inhabitants. As we know, the data does not cover the mass phenomenon of the new youth, intellectual and worker emigration towards the outside world. Among those under 30 and under 40 who do not see concrete prospects, this is now a radical phenomenon. So there are many fewer actual residents. In short, Taranto is now a city emptied in every block. A gruyere city.»
In the same way as the fraying affects the neighborhoods, to which the groups often refer in their own denominations, these represent islands of aggregation, real centers of reference against “the nothingness that advances”, galloping in recent years not only sportingly, and which left all around, to use Leogrande’s words, not holes but rubble. If in recent years the gaps in the sector represented the disaffection of the “grey areas”, the small groups instead were the Resistance. Tonight, however, they represent the sedimentation of a desire, as if you still don’t want to abandon it. And to bind these islands, to fill these voids, there are crazy people who, like industrious ants, bind them with hugs, greetings, handshakes, pats on the back, bitter smiles, closed fists, eyes swollen with disappointment but red with the desire for redemption . The promise that is not over. The images of neuronal networks are often compared to those of photos of the universe which seem to show the same form of branching around aggregates of energy. I like to think that, looking at ourselves from above, the image we would have seen would have been the same.
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The ending was worthy, epochal, perhaps unforgettable, but I still can’t get enough of it. You can love a stage, that’s clear by now, but how can you really say goodbye to concrete and steel? That same concrete that supported you but also left you at the mercy of the elements, that raised you but also led you to risk your own safety several times. That you kicked, hated, mistreated, dirtied, on which you fell and climbed. You find a corner, made of grates, near the stairs, already sheltered in the shadows by the spotlights, almost intimate and as if by instinct you embrace it.
You go down the stairs, you find yourself in the ante-stadium, with the last people leaving, the light of the spotlights is now a memory and everything resembles a metaphor of the descent into the underworld of thoughts and loneliness. Adrenaline often finds unusual ways: your eyes become perfect balconies from which tears can flow to vent this whirlwind of sensations, as hasn’t happened for years. And maybe you think that it’s true that we live together but we die alone.
Breaking this flow is the embrace of a friend from the stands, who perhaps realizes what is happening before you: “ce je cumbà…?”. You can’t look up but he understands you and hugs you: “t’ vogghie buene cumbà…”. We must stop considering the body according to an anatomical paradigm, as a shell with closed and inviolable boundaries. At certain moments our relationship with the environment is too deep to be able to draw a clear division between inside and outside: we taste, we breathe, we push, we drink, we sweat, we smell, we touch. The skin itself is porous, open to the world, even if it doesn’t show itself. We should instead consider the body for what it really is: sensation. Try, live, experiment, experience emotions and with this restore the meaning of the world and of the life that flows in that space and in this time. This is body building. The same happens in a community, as well as in a fan base. Experiencing sensations together, in a deeply individual dimension thrown into a synchrony very similar to what some would call madness: this too is forming a body and means doing it together. And then you enjoy that sadness, you are happy with those tears. It means that you are alive and that this is one of the ways to combat the idea that dying is done alone. If happiness is only real when it is shared, the same is true for its opposite further away in the darkest space away from the stands and the spotlights.
STiT text
Photo by Fabio Mitidieri
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