Carlo Petrini
Nel fango del dio pallone

If the last time I talked to you about an unknown work (Ink) because good things should be spread as much as possible, today I will explain why we should talk about things that hurt.

Released about a dozen years ago, "Nel fango del dio pallone" is the memoirs of Carlo Petrini, a former Serie A striker for Catanzaro, Roma, and many teams. One of the players banned after the 1980 match-fixing trial. I read it a year ago. When it was released, I didn't read it; it was too expensive for me as a fifteen-year-old, and it was a stroke of luck because my player's heart (still in the youth leagues) wouldn't have withstood it. However, at the time, I had read a few articles and interviews where there were some excerpts from the novel. I still read sports magazines, and it's needless to say that the chosen excerpts were the calmest, and everything was very watered down due to the book's danger.

Because "Nel fango del dio pallone" doesn't just limit itself to experiences of doping or fixed matches, as the few who talk about it would like you to believe. Instead, it is a ruthless account of the lives of footballers (and it calls important names into question, from Lippi to Trap), with all the excesses that follow, but it is mostly ruthless in narrating the footballers' mentality, who don't care about anything or anyone, except for saving as many millions as possible during their average 15-year careers. Even in less than clean ways. Because, as Petrini himself states, footballers, besides their sport, know nothing and can't do any other work.

But if it were only this. Petrini's biography continues even after the end of his career, with all his personal dramas derived from his presence in the world of sports. And it is in these last thirty pages that the book manages to destroy the reader as even Dostoevsky would not be able to do, and each of these last pages turns into a real kick in the stomach. Because Petrini, besides having a good pen (strange but true), possesses something no other writer has, and it is a boundless self-disdain and contempt for what he has been. That's why he wrote this and other books. To warn us that those who take 5 million a year to step on the field are not exactly saints.

Reading his biography doesn't prevent me from still supporting Parma, nor from playing fantasy football. However, every time I watch a match, "Nel fango..." is inside me and constantly pricks me with a needle of sadness, not strong, but constant, and it will be like this forever, even the day we win another World Cup. The only way I still have to love this sport unconditionally is to play it. So, if you love football too, don't read it, and if you do read it, at least I warned you!