Football Crazy
The Italian soccer industry is booming as never before.
On the evening of April 10 last, the club treasurers of Juventus Turin and Inter Milan noted contenntedly that gate receipt records had once again been broken. One hundred and fifty thousand fans had paid out a sum equivalent to 1.7 million Irish pounds to watch their teams play Borrdeaux and Real Madrid in the semiifinals of European competition. A further fifteen million people saw the two matches broadcast live on teleevision in Italian homes.
Meanwhile in every other country in Europe (without exception) foottball attendances continue to drop drastically and the financial noose chokes tighter and tighter around the necks of even the biggest clubs. But not in Italy. The football industry is booming there as never before.
Here are the principal factors which have brought this situation about.
(a) The Consumer: The Italian fan, knowledgeable and critical, possesses a seemingly insatiable appetite for the game.
(b) The Product: The old idea of a Superleague for Europe's top teams has never got off the ground for various reasons (difficulties of breaking away from native league structures, travel costs etc). However, the Italians have tried to realise this Utopian idea of bringing the best together in a different way - by buying up virtually all the world's top players to compete with each other in their domestic league. Today 's Italian football is glamorous and exciting.
(c) The Historical Circumstances: Italian soccer is still riding high in the wake of Italy's 1982 World Cup vicctory.
(d) The Media Back-Up: The media (and particularly the press) coverage of the game is both exhaustive and exxhausting. The game is analysed in a detail unthinkable in the British press. Top players can expect to give hunndreds of interviews each year. Most of the season there are no mid-week games but the press sustains interest throughout the week before each match with writing which, for the most part, is positive and has its heart in the right place.
(e) The Atmosphere: Soccer fulfils all sorts of emotional needs for the Italians (more of this later), but the need to kick the guts out of opposing fans which so many adolescents inndulge in in Britain is not one of them. There are few incidents of serious violence at soccer matches in Italy . Attending matches played in the sun, as part of a crowd untainted by bored, pimpled aggression, is a marvellous experience.
An hour before kick-off in the Juventus-Bordeaux game the feeling of celebration in the air at the Stadio Comunale is unmistakeable. Half the stadium basks in the late evening sun. Everyone is glad to be there and looking forward to an exxciting contest of fancy football.
Fifty minutes before kick-off the fans form chains of black and white scarves connecting right round the stadium. This is a game of historic importance for J uve. If they don't pass the semi-final hurdle and go on to win the Champions' Cup this year, the knife' will be put in. Rossi will go, Tardelli will go and Boniek (fat conntract with Roma in his back-pocket) will go - and a fine side will crumble apart.
The present side was assembled with the objective of proving itself beyond doubt to be the world's best. It hasn't done that yet. In the posttBrady era Juve lost out in the '83 championship to Roma and flopped badly in the Champions' Cup final against Hamburg the same year, despite producing soccer of glittering quality at earlier stages of the season. Last year brought success with a questionnmark. They won back the league and took the Cup Winners' Cup, but the latter was handed to them on a plate by the hapless Porto goalkeeper Ze Beto in a final they never controlled. This year Juventus have steered an untroubled course to the Euro semiifinals, but have spent most of it in a mid-table position in the Italian league. The team mooted and touted as the world's best side is still on trial.
The news comes through from Milan that Liam Brady has put ~nter 1-0 in front against Real.
Forty minutes to go before Turin kick-off and the Bordeaux team come out to loosen up, greeted by. earrpiercing, good-humoured whistling. The French champions, on their way to retaining their title, are billed as having the best midfield in Europe, with the Portugese left-footed artist Chalana aiding and abetting French internationals Tigana (who "dips his shoulder and goes past men" - Bobby Robson) and the tiny geometrician general Alain Giresse. There are seven other internationals in the team. J uventus themselves avoid coming out for a kick-around to give their arrival in the stadium just before kickkoff maximum psychological effect.
Altobelli has put Inter 2-0 in front. The electrical charge given off in the Stadio Comunale as Juventus and Bordeaux walk out is amazing: the strange subterranean noise of the horns and the cheering; the sea of black and white flags; the intense white flooddlights switched on just before; the myriad red flares lighting up behind the goals.
Juve begin fidgety. The pressure is clearly on. In England the FA Cup final is traditionally the worst game of the year as the ballyhoo build-up and big-time atmosphere get to the players' nerves. This is the kind of pressure Italy's top teams live with all year round. This is why Roma's Conti and Graziani blessed themselves and missed penalties in the Champions' Cup shoot-out with Liverpool last year. Tonight Bordeaux allow Juve to come to them and control the early game with Tigana soothing things and Giresse switching play deftly in middfield. Then on 29 minutes Boniek latches on to a long ball from Platini and tucks it neatly past the goalkeeper into the net.
As so often before Platini has opened the door. Platini has long since taken over from Pope Wojtyla as Italian folk-idol no I. His long passes, free-kicks and nonchalant, arrogant leadership of the team have cast a spell over the peninsula. He also scores goals. For the third consecutive year Platini will end the season as top league scorer in Italy - this in a country where defences are more difficult to breach than in any other in the world. The figures prove it.
Juve up their playa gear after scorring, their excitability finding more fluid expression after the nervous start. At half-time a large flag is unnrolled revealing a huge black heart on a white field. Juve are doing fheir stuff. Going in front is vital for them. Any team will have a job pinning them back once their nose is in front.
Bordeaux come at them in the second half - to the French team's undoing. The second goal is a repeat of the first as another long ball from Platini catches the French defence out. This time Briaschi is at hand to finish the business. Four minutes later virrtuoso work from Boniek diddles the right flank of the Bordeaux defence to find Platini on the 18 yard line, lurking like an evil fairy at the edge of a wood. 3-0 for Juventus.
With a place in the final'now effecctively secured, the Juventus fans light up candles round the ground. It's a beautiful sight. The atmosphere has turned devotional and the symbolism is clear. The team, in this "divine" form, releases all sorts of religious impulses in its fans: the need to beelieve, to hope and to love. For the moment Juventus represents heavennon-earth in the collective fantasy of the crowd and Platini strides the Elysian fields. The images (on scarves, mirrors, banners, photographs) and relics (autographs) of Saint Michel will continue to be purchased with something of the zeal with which Padre Pio's bits and pieces were snapped up by the customers back in the early sixties. The song remains the same.
For a time Juventus do indeed play sublime soccer, mixing coasting possesssion with viperous counter-attacks. Then, typically, they treat the fans to a wonky finish, even more nervous than the start. Goalkeeper Bodini, coming for a high ball beyond the far post, gropes at thin air in a way which does not augur well for their final against Liverpool in Brussels. These are players playing under pressure. Two mistakes and you are 'out. The excellent Tacconi, Bodini's predecesssor, made two such mistakes early in the season and hasn't been heard of since.
Pressmen storm the players' dresssing-rooms like soldiers taking the front-gate of a medieval fortress. Marco Tardelli has to keep a firm grip on his hair dryer, almost swept aside by the tide. Even more expensive football flesh in the form of Paolo Rossi lies stretched out weary and disregarded in the corner. Tonight it's the foreignners they're after.
Boniek is pinned to the wall by the horde. His face is lit by a natural inntelligence and the pleasure of a night's work well done. Boniek is able to put the accolades into perspective. His press hasn't always been so good. He lest out in the battle for midfield generalship with Platini in their early days at Turin. He was subsequently farmed out to do the donkey-work for the team on the left, in the absence of a winger or left-footed midfielder on that side. In this year's slightly revised Juventus line-up Boniek has been reeleased from his strait-jacket and the results are there for all to see.
All Thursday's newspapers are aggreed that Liam Brady was man of the match in Milan. The Inter-Real game broke the all-time record for Italian gate receipts - just short of a million Irish pounds. Brady is singled out for particular praise by such varyying celebrities as Claudio Gentile, Gian-Carlo Antognoni, Denmark's Michael Laudrup, Holland's I an Peters and Spain's Luiz Suarez - one of Brady's great predecessors in the no 10 shirt at Inter in the sixties.
The Irishman has played a big part in Inter's advance in Europe this year. In the first round return leg he scored the equalising goal from a free-kick against Sportul Bucharest. In the third round it was his cross to Altobelli which forced a penalty in the dying minutes of a tie which Hamburg apppeared to have sewn up. It was Brady who struck home the winning penalty in front of 80,000 people, most of whom were too frightened to watch, ensuring another sell-out crowd for Inter in the next round. It was Brady who laid on two of Inter's goals in their fine 3-1 quarter-final victory in Cologne. In the championship it was Brady who laid on three of Inter's goals in the 4-0 victory over Juventus.
In his two seasons at Sampdoria ("the team has a lot of potential, but I won't be around to see them realise it") Brady was voted top player each year. In his two years at Juventus Brady helped his side win two league championships, striking the decisive penalty five minutes before the end of the season to clinch the second. The players and staff at J uventus didn't want him to leave. No other foreigner has played as many games in the Italian league since the boundaries opened. No other foreigner has been so successsful in winning titles in the Italian game.
Such incense-swinging in the direcction of Liam Brady would stink of chauvinism were it not necessary to set the facts straight as far as his person and achievements are concerned in the Irish public eye. Our best player and finest foot balling ambassador has been the butt of an unprecedentedly bitter personal campaign waged by a journaalist who has never left our shores to see Brady perform in his past five years in Italy. Nonetheless the Irish pu blic is treated to a tirade of moralisstic rantings on Brady the foot bailer , and (very impertinently) on Brady the man.
Brady, we are told, is weak, arroogant, spoiled and petulant. He abbsconds his duties. He should be ashamed of himself. "Nothing can be expected of him." (One wonders just what kind of fools the Italians are?)
So much for the garbage. Now for the facts.
Liam Brady is unfailingly polite in his dealings with journalists. He goes out of his way to be nice to the kids asking for autographs. On the field of play - be it training-ground or foottball stadium - he is universally respeccted by the people in the Italian game. "Conscientious", "professional", "moodest" and "world-class" are the words which recur again and again when people talk about Brady.
It is true, though, that Brady does not suffer fools gladly. When a Genoovese journalist, desperate for copy, concocted a story that Brady did not get on personally with team-mate Trevor Francis, Brady refused to talk to him for a period after the "story" appeared. "If you're going to write about me like that, then' I can't talk to you seriously." It's also true that a reserved man like Brady isn't such a thankful personality for the media as Platini, for example, who has his own TV show and can switch on the Gallic charm as viewers are tuning in. Brady and his wife Sarah are quiet, family people who prefer to spend their evenings reading at home rather than parading each other out on the town.
Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Inter's second foreigner, hasn't so far made the impact on the Italian scoring-charts that was expected: six goals in the league, five in Europe. ("That's because Rummenigge is an Italian-type forward with a style Italian defences are used to. Playing in Europe is diffferent" - Ruud Krol.) Rummenigge scores most of his goals close in. He's very good at getting behind defences. Problem in Italy is the closer in you get, the more defending bodies bar the way. Getting behind defences usually means you've run your way over the dead-ball line and out of play.
The key characteristic of Italian football is its realism. At first sight this would appear at odds with the exxtravagant nature of the Italian temmperament. In terms of helping Inter win their quarter-final tie with Cologne it wasn't very realistic of right-back Ferri to lash out at Klaus Allofs on the ground under the nose of the referee for no apparent reason and get himself sent off after just five minutes of play in the away leg.
But it's precisely because of the hottblooded character of the Italians that a cold-blooded realistic approach beecomes necessary if they are to achieve results. It's no coincidence that the bi ble of realistic political practice h"The Prince" - was written by an Italian. Successful politicians, like Charles Haughey, use Machiavelli's book as a pillow to sleep on at night. And in the ·world of crime, an organiisation which has its roots in Italian society - the Mafia - is the most famous, cold-blooded and efficient of them all.
In the football world, the clamp which curbs the Italians' naturally expansive character (and the opposiitions' attempts to score) is commonly known to the outsiders as catenaccio - a word which describes the specific defensive system developed by Helenio Herrera with great success back in Milan in the early sixties. But long before Herrera arrived on the scene Italian players must have tempered their flair with caution.
Caution is the watchword and the basis of all their success. Look at the finest defenders in the Italian team today: Bergorni (Inter) and Vierchowod (Sampdoria). Their movements with the ball are cramped and reppressed. Italian goalkeepers still kick the ball up field and "get rid of it" instead of throwing it out to the libero to build from the back. Italian defennces still play with their backs to the wall and goalkeepers' duties are still confined to in between the sticks. The use of the off-side trap is still abhorred because of the wide spaces it leaves open (for such as Rummeniggeto burst into) should it break down. Roma's new Swedish coach, Eriksson, is one of the few who have introduced the practice in Italy - with unsuccessful results. '
"Top football is about playing out eighty-eight of the ninety minutes as a matter of routine, making sure not to make any mistakes, and having the ability to create and take the chances in the two minutes which will decide the result on the scoreboard." Johan Cruijff's words sum up [he modern game perfectly.
It's not surprising that J ohan Cruijff is an admirer of Liam Brady. Brady is a fine exponent of the top football Cruijff is talking about. Five years of playing in teams with players like Bettega, Causio, Zoff, Tardelli, Scirea, Cabrini, Vierchowod, Francis and Rummenigge have influenced and reefined his style. Brady has cut down on the spectacular, crowd-pleasing aspects of his play to become increasingly cerebral and functional. He slides around like an apparently guileless snake, pretending to mind his own business. He may look disinterested, but his football brain is working overrtime and waiting to strike the moment his opponents' guard is down.
Suggesting that Brady should adopt a swashbuckling, "up-and-at-tern, lads!" approach to lead successive Charges of the Green Brigade to immortal glory at Lansdowne Road is a schoolboy idea which belongs strictly to the realm of comic-strip thinking ("Roy of the Rovers"). It will not answer the realistic demands of top international soccer. Such an approach may go a long way in international rugby. It will certainly go a long way in English league division 2 and may even go some way in Canon league division I. But top international football is anoother cup of tea. Ask Liverpool. Ask Johann Cruijff. Ask the Italians. They've won a few things in their time and they ought to know.
To criticise Liam Brady for not attempting to play in such a way is really an unintended compliment (but one which would throw sand in the eyes of our soccer-loving public from seeing and enjoying the subtle excellence which is the hallmark of our finest player. •