He put his signature on the «save Italy decree». The homeland of football, of course, because the tasks of straightening the country fall to others. However, starting at 11pm on Monday evening, it would be him, Mattia Zaccagni, the Cortese Shooter who placed the miraculous ball in Croatia’s goal, seven seconds after the collapse of the Azzurri in Luciano Spalletti. The suitcase on the bed was that of a long journey, that is, the very probable return to the beaches and umbrellas but the nightmare of elimination from the European Championships has been chased away.
Spring in Verona
Zac is well known on the routes that carve the Veneto. Leipzig, therefore, is Germany but also Verona, in the night of a draw for Italy which protected them from the attacks of the loggionists, of the paying public and of the incorporated “everyone at home” group: “It was 2013. Mattia came from Bellaria. The season was already over and he did an audition with us, in the anti-stadium, in front of the Bentegodi. With me there were Claudio Calvetti and Roberto Gemmi, who took care of the youth sector of Hellas. Calvetti had told me about this boy who was good, but perhaps because he didn’t have a large physical structure he wasn’t considered for the big teams, for Inter, or Milan and Juventus”, he says Massimo Pavanel, the coach, at the time of the Verona Primavera who first directed and guided Zaccagni in yellow-blue.
The young Zaccagni
Pavanel, later coach of Padova among others, paints a portrait of Zac as a young man: «He was fast and had a lot of quality. There were, in fact, some doubts about his athletic appearance. In fact, we are on retreat in Racines, in the summer, and we call him to evaluate him again. I sit in the stands, to follow him from above, with Calvetti at my side. He takes two actions and takes shots with feints and dribbles that make us jump. “You already have change to stop at the hotel, right? Because it doesn’t have to go away“Maybe they don’t notice him and blow him away”, we said to each other. And so he arrived at Verona.” He had the poster of Alessandro Del Piero hanging in his bedroom as a child and young boy, then, Mattia, and his goal at the Red Bull Arena recalled, due to the mechanics of the gesture and the calibration, the one scored by Pinturicchio himself, in the semi-final of the 2006 World Cup, Germany beaten in his sacred land, in Dortmund. Little Zac watching Alex and dreaming, time passing and where Del Piero was now he’s here: «I met him when it was October 2014. I was called to coach Venezia, who were in the Lega Pro. It was Ivone De Franceschi who had the intuition to bring him, the manager who took him on loan from Hellas, in summer. I arrived, as a replacement, and I noticed the means he had. He played with me steadily”, says Michele Serena.
“What an emotion”
He was going to discover the world, Zaccagni, and on the boat to Sant’Elena there was the light of life in Venice, and Serena at the helm of a team that placed itself on the edge of mid-table, and who now comments: «Seeing him now is an emotion. Her improvement was constant, a growth that made her stand out more and more, from one experience to the next. And it is an example to take. With us he was the student, now he is the teacher. Of course, I admit that it was impossible to understand that he would make this journey: I don’t have a crystal ball, nor have I ever had one.” Years like days have flown by. From Venice, the return to Hellas, the debut in Serie A in 2015, with Inter at San Siro, a handful of matches to then fill the backpack again and pack the box with the boots and put on the Cittadella shirt, in January 2016: «Zaccagni shifts the balance. He did it with Italy as with us and, alas, against us”, sighs Stefano Marchetti, who is Citta’s demiurgic sporting director. It was promotion to Serie B, with Zac leading the way in Roberto Venturato’s game. Marchetti continues: «It was the first championship he won. Citadel was a great launching pad for his career. This is a reality in which one has time and a way to mature. Back at Hellas, he rose to Serie A twice and, in the second of these, in front of us, he was decisive in the second leg of the playoffs: he wasn’t there in the 2-0 with which we prevailed in the first leg, in the second match he opened the way for Verona’s comeback, with the first of the three goals with which they defeated us. The thing I say about Zaccagni is very simple: he is a strong player.”
Hellas, mon amour
Hellas, mon amour, for Mattia. The tattoos with the dates in which he was promoted to the gialloblù, coached by Fabio Pecchia, in 2017, and the season that seemed compromised, in 2019with Fabio Grosso (see Italy, Germany and Dortmund…) which didn’t take us, the exemption, Alfredo Aglietti who pilots Verona at the Impresa, a month to make it. Afterwards, the turning point, with Ivan Juric, the man from Split, who moves him further forward from mid-forward, to the attacking midfield, and rewrites history of Hellas and Zaccagni, who becomes man. He made his home in Verona, from Verona he moved to Lazio three years ago, learning new lessons from Maurizio Sarri. And then here we are under the sky of Saxony, in Leipzig, and who knows that Juric, tough and cultured leader, ideologue of metal football of an unforgettable Hellas, iron Croatian, adept of the Vatreni who look at the sea, seeing his national team dislodged from the European Championships by that boy who emerged from his forge with the champion’s armor, did not quote the Caesar of “Tu quoque”. His son is, Zac, who is in the heart of that street that leads from Verona to Venice, and Cittadella is the toll booth of hope on a road that has become rock ‘n’ roll.
