Labels have chased him in vain since the day of his baptism. His father, a communist of yesteryear as well as the goalkeeper of Livorno in his time, insisted that he be called Communardin memory of the Paris Commune and ours did not take offence and never pretended to change it in his mature age. Because Comunardo Niccolai, Tuscan from Uzzanoin the Pistoia area, a son of the Second World War (registered on 15 December 1946), was always stronger than labels and teasing. Indeed, he followed his father’s footballing path with discipline and honour, just like in his military service, beating the Tuscan circuit before moving to Sardinia and end up in the crosshairs magic of Cagliari of Scopigno and Gigi Riva (summer of 1968), ready in two years to win the historic scudetto of that region. He didn’t even take it personally the day when, wrongly with respect to the news, they called him the “king of own goals” for the sequence of six own goals that were more the desperate and generous gesture of a defender doc that the flaw of a footballer with little talent. Beppe Tomasini, his companion in a hundred challenges, who telephoned him until a few weeks before his hospitalization in Pistoia and his death due to illness, always had a simple explanation for those accidents along the way. “Nico was generous, he always put his foot down when a ball entered the penalty area even though I told him to leave it alone. I kept telling him: Albertosi will take care of it. But nothing. So in Turin in that match with Juve that ended 2-2 with his own goal. Albertosi shouted: mine, mine! Nothing. Nico deflected the ball!”The interested party’s reaction was always the same: «I also scored 4 goals, which is quite a lot for a defender at that time, but nobody remembers that!». It was no coincidence that he landed in the national team, part of the mini Cagliari block that was even more in fashion at the time. He was together with Albertosi, Cera libero, Domenghini and Gigi Riva of course, the group leader who would be crowned Emperor of the goal during the Mexican World Cup. After the first match, Comunardo was tripped up by fate: he was replaced by Roberto Rosato, who from that day on became untouchable. And from his experience with the Azzurri (just 3 appearances) he retained the brilliant joke of Manlio Scopignowe still don’t know after all these years if it was authentic or refined and corrected by the coach who liked to pass himself off as a cynical observer rather than a competent coach. Scopigno said: «I would have expected anything but to see Niccolai on worldwide television!». After completing his career as a footballer, Comunardo moved up the ranks of federal technicians, and among others he had very young players in his hands Buffon and Totti whose qualities he soon highlighted. In recent times he had lost some shreds of memory, he rarely left the house but continued to answer, every week, the phone calls of his friend Beppe Tomasini. Then suddenly the silence that hinted at the sad epilogue of these last hours. “He will certainly meet Gigi and they will start playing again” wrote the Cagliari fans. Comunardo had greeted the great bomber with a phrase that had become a sort of manifesto of his generation: “Together we lived the best years of our lives”. In fact, since yesterday we are all a little more alone.
