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Luca Pisapia was born in Milan in 1977. Journalist for Il Manifesto, La Gazzetta dello Sport, and Il Fatto Quotidiano, always passionate about sports and cinema, he started writing on various blogs (notably the blog Lacrime di Borghetti), where he developed his own style and unique way of narrating the game of football as well as the world that surrounds us.
After moving to Rome, he wrote a book (a "Spaghetti Western") about Gigi Riva titled "Ultimo hombre vertical" published by Limina in 2012. An instant-book with which he goes beyond the usual portrayal of the man and footballer Gigi Riva, considering him in a broader context and as a historical and political symbol of a significant era like the sixties and seventies.
His second book is titled "Uccidi Paul Breitner: Fragments of a Discourse on Football" and was published last 21 on Edizioni Alegre within the Quinto Tipo series, curated by Wu Ming 1.
An amalgam of essay and novel, where it is difficult (maybe impossible) to find similar moments in our country's literature, in which football is narrated on a narrative structure that follows a thread built on three editions of the Football World Cup but is rich with stories that intertwine in the composition of a noir where truth and the implausible continuously exchange roles.
The interview was also clearly an opportunity to discuss the comparison between the web and the publishing world at a time when the topic of massively expressed opinions is certainly central to the debate in our country; just like the latest edition of the Football World Cup in Italy, which was somewhat an excuse to talk about many things except the one truly relevant fact: the failure of the "azzurri" to qualify.
I again thank Luca for his availability and wish him the best of luck for the book and his future projects, while to the Debaser community and all readers, I can only wish an enjoyable read.
1. Hello Luca, it's a pleasure to host you on the pages of Debaser, thank you very much for agreeing to do this interview. Journalist and writer, you collaborate with Il Manifesto, La Gazzetta dello Sport, and Il Fatto Quotidiano, but I think I'm not wrong if I say that the web was your first "dimension" and a space you still recognize as your own. I wanted to start by asking you precisely when and how you began writing and, among other things, why mainly about football? Assuming it is so. I say this because in your way of talking about football there is a richness of content that transcends the "game" and the ideal and concrete space circumscribed only by the playing rectangle and everything that revolves around it like business, agents, coaches and professionals, fans. Moreover, I am not only speaking about content but also about your way of approaching the subject which can go beyond strictly journalistic and more prevalent sports canons. Is football, particularly in our country, "popular" in some way, in your opinion, precisely in the sense of being an expression of an all-encompassing culture instead of merely being understood as a "vulgar" manifestation?
LP. Hello everyone and thank you for hosting me on Debaser. I started dealing with journalism quite by chance while living in London and studying cinema, then due to a series of events I ended up writing for Gazzetta dello Sport as a correspondent, and thus professionally dealing with football, a passion I had cultivated until then as a simple AC Milan fan. Perhaps it was precisely the fact that I came from a different background, neither better nor worse compared to journalism, and therefore did not train internally, that allowed and still allows me to dedicate myself to the ball with a different perspective, trying to investigate it as a product of the cultural industry tout court. What I try to do is simply narrate the aesthetic, social, and political dimensions of a spectacle that has taken the rightful place of cinema as the factory of desire, the best ideological apparatus in the service of capital. For all this, the encounter with Lacrime di Borghetti was fundamental, the first blog of football literature and culture to appear in Italy. But more about this later. For the rest, I'm on the web like everyone else, but I struggle to distinguish the alt key from ctrl...
2. Let's move on to your latest book, titled "Uccidi Paul Breitner: Fragments of a Discourse on Football," which has just been published last June 21 on Edizioni Alegre within the Quinto Tipo series. Can you explain what exactly it's about? First of all, why did you choose the great Paul Breitner and this title? I imagine it's a choice that in some way strongly represents the contents. But what is the book about? Is it a literary fiction with historical content? Besides, it seems to me that every reference is always centered and contextualized both on the historical, geopolitical, and ideological plane. Can we consider the work in some way also a reinterpretation of the work of a writer and journalist like Osvaldo Soriano?
LP. Like all the books in the Quinto Tipo series, curated by Wu Ming 1, mine is also an amalgam of essay and novel, even if, when talking about football, I found myself compelled to push the limits of the indecipherable even further. I am convinced, in fact, that an organic discourse on football today is no longer possible, assuming it ever was. Therefore, we should only sketch a series of "fragments on the discourse" that convey its complexity and limit a presumed systematization. If you have the patience and kindness to read the book, you will find an underlying narrative structure (football and politics at the 1978 World Cup, football and economy at the 2014 World Cup, football and media at the 1994 World Cup) always on the verge of exploding, shattering into a thousand pieces, which are then the thousand known and unknown stories of football. If the literary structure is that of noir, the ambition is to make the truth plausible and vice versa. All this while trying to keep a century of football in a synchronic frame, inside and outside the flow of time.
3. Your previous book was dedicated to Gigi Riva, probably the greatest striker in the history of Italian football. Another certainly special character, let's say out of every scheme and definition, and loved regardless of any flag and fan allegiance. How and differently from Paul Breitner. I believe you published "Gigi Riva: Ultimo hombre vertical" (Limina) in 2012. How did the idea of writing the book come about and from what perspective do you narrate the legendary thunderclap? Is there anything in common between Gigi Riva and Paul Breitner, in your opinion? I mean if there is any common thread that, even at an unconscious level, led you from that first literary work of yours to this sequel. Maybe it's a somewhat premature question, but if you had to hypothetically imagine an ideal "trilogy," who do you think would be the third champion at the center of an upcoming project?
LP. In reality, everything happened by chance, the first was a book expressly requested by the then publishing house, and it allowed me to go beyond just a portrait of the man and the footballer, placing him as a symbol in a decisive historical and political context like that of the sixties and seventies, in Italy and the world. Gigi Riva becomes the protagonist of a Spaghetti Western, tasked with narrating economic and social transformations from the wrong side of history, that of a hero in spite of himself, symbol of the weak and the oppressed. With Paul Breitner, a footballer who has always self-narrated as a communist, only to become the first to have a personal sponsor and choose to play for Franco's Real Madrid, I do the reverse journey. He becomes a negative symbol and a narrative link through his antagonist — the Rote Armee Fraktion that wants to kill him — of the political connections from Hitler's bunker to the presidential box at the 1978 World Cup final between Argentina and the Netherlands, up to the bloody postcolonial process carried out by Fifa in Brazil in 2014. I don't have a third character in mind yet, maybe it will be the case to tell the story of a footballer of the future, whose existence we are still unaware of.
4. I think I'm not wrong in saying that you still recognize the web as your own space today. But what differences are there between writing a book or for a journalistic publication or a blog? Assuming that things have different connotations for you. More difficult is the world of publishing, journalism, or the web? I can say I write a lot and run a football blog, which is more of a kind of small community, but I can honestly say I find it really difficult to communicate and engage both on the web and in real life, and even on a matter that should be less significant compared to many other things like football? How challenging is it to write, which I think is a job in which one exposes oneself and seeks contact with others, in a cultural context like this? Are we talking about a genuine expressive urgency, and maybe you even find this kind of "challenge" somehow stimulating?
LP. Now, I can give proper credit to Lacrime di Borghetti, a web space that emerged in the late 2000s from a group of Roman friends that radically changed how football is narrated. Always rejecting any type of sponsorship or domestication, we managed to convey the love for football and literature, personal and collective experiences, using both high and low keys interchangeably. Then, with the explosion of social networks, widespread opinionism, the compulsion to express oneself and write online, paralleling what Tullio De Mauro called functional illiteracy, the web exploded: dozens of senseless football blogs emerged, often poorly written. Some dived into the easier and indigestible subject of nostalgia, which always brings more "likes" from an audience that recognizes in it their golden age of childhood. Others sold out to sponsors and money, dedicating themselves to hagiographic portraits of players of a certain sportswear brand. The pleasure of writing to build community was lost along with the ever-increasing incapacity to listen. Today no one wants to read, everyone wants to write. And in this dimension, Lacrime di Borghetti no longer makes sense.
5. I think it's appropriate to conclude by first asking about your current and future projects. Also, to provide some more indication about your work to the readers. As well as it's impossible not to ask you something about the recent Football World Cup. I will throw some themes among those that seemed to me the most recurring and interesting: the authentic or presumed failure of Italian football and compared perhaps also to the more or less sensational "debacles" of Argentina, Brazil, Germany, Spain; the absent and prolonged affirmation of African football and whether you think it is impossible to have a strong national football team in a country that cannot develop its football movement, and consequently there may be a certain presumed third-worldist rhetoric that does not want to open its eyes to this reality and merely "sympathizes"; national sovereignty and cultural integration in contemporary football and particularly in Europe.
LP. For now, you can read me in the Manifesto, which kindly hosts me. Tomorrow, I don't know. Regarding the Russia 2018 World Cup, I believe there was too much emphasis on the account of the fall of the gods. The only surprise, if you like, is Croatia in the final, which allows us to refute the readings on sovereignty vs. multiculturalism. Beyond the peculiar political identity of the country, Croatian players were almost all refugees, children of war and diaspora, therefore not developed football-wise "in a nation". Indeed. This also allows us to debunk the myth of French multiculturalism, already crumbled in the aftermath of the fake tale of the Black, Blanc, and Beur World Champions of 1998 and ready to set alight at the next riots in the banlieues. France, Croatia, the failure to qualify for the Round of 16 of the entire African contingent, are perfect examples of postcolonialism: the real theme of the last World Cup, and the reason for the failure of the Italian National Team and the country of Italy. But nothing is ever new; it has always been, and time does not flow in just one direction. If you want to read Uccidi Paul Breitner, there are already many answers to these questions there...
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