Carlo Ancelotti (6 page)

I got off the train from San Benedetto del Tronto at Rome’s Termini station with simple, easy-to-follow instructions: “Get a taxi
outside the station, tell him to take you to Via del Circo Massimo, the press conference is being held there. Pay close attention: a yellow taxi, with writing on the door and TAXI written on the dome light on the roof; don’t take a gypsy cab, they’ll charge extra.” Fine. I obeyed the instructions to the letter, but the taxi driver didn’t recognize me; we pulled up outside of Roma headquarters, and there was a screaming, chanting crowd of four thousand delirious fans. In fact, the transfer season of 1979 was an important time: Turone and Benetti had just arrived, Conti had returned from being on loan, and Romano had joined in defense. It was a nice feeling, I felt like one of the team. I was ready to get out of the cab, asked the driver how much I owed him. “Ten thousand lire.” I pulled out my wallet, extracted a ten thousand lire note, handed it to him. There was a growl of disapproval from the fan base. When they saw that I was paying the cabbie, the crowd turned ugly, and insults flew in the general direction of that unfortunate taxi driver. “A Lazio fan!” “Dirty traitor!”
“Nun te devi fa’ paga’
—don’t take his money!”
“Cojone
, asshole, Roma is sacred!” To make a longish story short, they hemmed the cab in, taking the driver hostage, and started rocking the car back and forth for no good reason—and with me inside. I started feeling seasick. It must be fate—I seem to remember the faces of a lot of taxi drivers. He was terrified: “Get out. The ride is free.
Just get out of my cab. Beat it!”
My career was just beginning, and they were already ordering me out of taxicabs.

There was just one minor detail: I still didn’t have a signed contract. With Parma, I was earning ten million lire ($8,000) a year; now that Roma had recruited me, I had decided to ask them for a hundred million. I was at the summer training camp in Brunico,
we’d been working for a few days, so I went to talk directly with the chairman, Dino Viola, a magnificent manager and leader, and a man who counted pennies. “Ancelotti, how much do you want?”

“A hundred million lire a year, Mister Chairman.”

“You are out of your mind.”

Then three weeks of total silence. On the last working day before the regular season began, Viola himself called me: “Ancelotti, have you thought about your salary?”

“Well, maybe we could talk it over …” So I let him talk me down to 24 million lire ($20,000) a year before taxes, from my original demand of 100 million lire a year after taxes. Twenty-four million lire—more or less the same salary Parma had been paying me. How long did negotiations last? About twenty-nine seconds. Results of the negotiations: disastrous. Just like my debut in Serie A, at the Stadio Olimpico, playing against the champions of Italy, A. C. Milan. Enormous tension, enormous excitement, an unsettling sense of doubt as to whether I was up to the challenge of that gigantic world. After the first minute of play, Conti runs up the length of the pitch and hits the post, Pruzzo brings it down with his head. I’m in the penalty area, Albertosi makes a miraculous save, and the ball rolls out half a meter in front of me. I can’t believe my luck—on my début in Serie A! I close my eyes, pull back, and send an intercontinental missile toward the goal; so hard my foot was hurting afterwards. Albertosi gets to his feet and blocks the ball with his face. Jesus, he blocks it with his
face
. The ball ricocheted away from the goal—final score: 0–0. I was confused, a little angry, but almost happy. Deep inside, part of me was celebrating. I finally understand, I’ve finally learned. I faked a fake. I faked a goal.

P
eppe didn’t need to fake anything. He really was on the verge of dying on the spot, of a massive myocardial infarction—heart attack, to the layman. If he did, we already had our stories straight: we would just blame it on Bruno Conti. The situation was appropriate; there he stood, wrapped in toilet paper, ready to be flushed away if necessary.

Peppe was in charge of the team warehouse; he’d been hired by A. S. Roma after he appeared on the playing field one day. It was a Roma–Inter match, Inter had a last-minute penalty shot, and Peppe had been unable to restrain himself. He hopped over the fence at the Stadio Olimpico. Howling like a madman, he’d rushed forward, but it had ended badly for him: beaten silly in front of five thousand screaming fans. The team owners wanted to save him from similar
embarrassments in the future, so they took pity and gave him a job in the warehouse. He was a tiny little guy, a hard worker, with a very odd tic: he’d stick out his tongue and blow, then fake a dry spit. It was a brilliant masterpiece of weirdness, which always culminated the same way, with the same phrase repeated twice: “Up Lazio’s ass, up Lazio’s ass.” And who could argue with that sentiment?

One evening at training camp, we decided to play a prank on him. Me, Roberto Pruzzo, and Roberto Scarnecchia took Conti and wrapped him in toilet paper. Rolled from head to toe: he was so little that it only took a few rolls. “Soft, strong, and very long—Bruno Conti.” He really looked like a mummy; we even dabbed on a couple of spots of Mercurochrome to give him that nice dried-blood effect. At two in the morning, we stood him right outside of Peppe’s room, knocked on the door, and ran like the wind. When the poor little guy opened the door, Conti let out an infernal howl:
“Mwah-hah-hah-hah.”
Peppe gasped and staggered backward, the prank had worked perfectly. A little too perfectly, in fact: he had turned pale. He was mouthing words, but no sound was coming out. He was paralyzed by fear. “Peppe, it’s only me, Bruno.” Maybe that’s what really scared him … Anyway, we had to call a doctor. A couple of quick slaps in the face, and he was fine.

I considered kneeling down to beg forgiveness, but then I decided against it: “Right, smart boy, you’ll never get back up.” Achilles had weak heels, Pinocchio and Tassotti had spectacular noses, I had my knees: let’s just say that they weren’t exactly my strong point. I found out how weak my knees were when I was playing for Roma, with two serious on-field injuries. I don’t have the strongest memory where dates are concerned, but October 25
1981 is a day I’ll always remember. We were playing Fiorentina, and Francesco Casagrande—a determined halfback who had already broken my nose once when he was playing for Cagliari—was marking me. While I was trying to pivot to reach a throw-in, I made a strange move after chesting the ball down. I’d twisted my knee, and my teammates all took it out on him: “Bastard.” In fact, though, he hadn’t done a thing wrong; the instant replay on RAI television was crystal clear, he’d never even touched me.

The things that flood into your mind in those few seconds are crazy. The first thing that came to mind was Francesco Rocca, aka Kawasaki, an idol of mine, my first roommate when I came to play for Roma. In my mind, I reviewed his slow recovery, a lengthy period of torment after a serious injury, and, more importantly, I tasted the fettuccine (pansful at a time) that his mamma used to make for us in San Vito Romano after each training session. To tell the truth, I remembered the fettuccine first, then I remembered my teammate (after all, life is about priorities). Anyway, I had just ruptured my anterior cruciate ligament, but, since my menisci were still sound, we decided to try to recuperate without surgery. I stayed off my leg for a month, then I got back on my feet, and I was put on the bench for a game against Napoli. The next day, side-footing the ball during training with the youth team, I heard a distinct
clock
sound from inside my knee. Come again?
Clock
. Oh, thanks, now I understand perfectly. Two sharp sounds, and my knee was bent permanently. I was in Trigoria, I lay down on my sofa, and I called Doctor Alicicco. “Ernesto, something’s wrong. I think I broke my meniscus.”

“No, I doubt that very much.”

“Please come take a look.”

“I’m on my way.”

He was checking me over, increasingly confident that it wasn’t my meniscus: “See, it can’t be your meniscus; this is the meniscus over here,” and as he spoke he lightly touched the spot with one finger. I leapt straight into the air, I hate to admit it. Still, even back then, I was already right one hundred percent of the time.

I underwent surgery, and recuperation was pure hell. Nowadays, just two months after surgery, Gattuso is already running; back then, two months after the operation, I swore like a sailor every time I tried to move. For forty-five days I was in a cast, in bed, with my leg at a forty-five-degree angle, in traction; then, for another month, I was in an air cast (a removable cast, which I took off every morning for physical therapy), followed by another thirty days during which I could only set my foot down lightly on the floor. Total time out of commission: one hundred and fifty days off my feet, no end of boredom and irritation, and an incredible array of pains. In the meantime, Rocca had stopped playing, but, since he was now an expert in the field of hobbling and limping, he stayed on with A. S. Roma, assigned to work on my recovery.

While bedridden, I actually put on some weight. I know—incredible … me, of all people! So Francesco decided to put me on a diet. During summer training camp, I worked separately with him while the team exercised and practiced. Every morning, he put me on the scale, and I never lost a pound. Nothing. It drove him crazy. He couldn’t figure it out.

“Why aren’t you losing weight? Carletto, what am I doing wrong?”

“Francesco, I don’t understand it either. But it’s got to be your fault.”

If he took the blame, credit went to the fans. In Brunico, not all the players slept in the main wing of the hotel. Many of us were housed in an annex where each room had a kitchen of its own. Fans would bring us wild mushrooms, we got hungry at a certain time of the evening, and at midnight we started cooking up
fettuccine ai funghi
. If those mushrooms had been poisonous, today Rome would have just one soccer team. We ate epic quantities of pasta. I finally recovered completely in October 1982, round as a soccer ball but happy, just in time to begin the preseason leading up to the Scudetto and skip the World Cup entirely. “Champions of the World. Champions of the World. Champions of the World.” They were. I would only become a champion later, with A. C. Milan.

And to think that Enzo Bearzot would have taken me to Spain. I had already debuted in the Italian national team in January 1981, in Montevideo, Uruguay, when Italy played the Netherlands. I played in the Mundialito; I scored a goal after six minutes of play, and I even won a gold watch that the organization put up as a prize. My teammates, the older ones especially, took that outcome with wisdom and philosophy: “Lucky jerk.”

After the match, I went out to celebrate with Marco Tardelli and Claudio Gentile, and then we went to dinner. Of course, we got back late. My first thought, as we returned to the hotel: “I’m with Tardelli and Gentile, so there’s no problem.” My second thought, as I saw Bearzot waiting for us at the lobby doors: “No problem, my ass.”

I was the ass, and my time was up. We went around to the back entrance, we took the elevator, we punched 3 for our floor.
The elevator doors slid open; we were home free—or almost. We would have been, too, if it hadn’t been for that tiny detail: Bearzot, waiting to greet us.
Il Vecchio
—the Old Man—in person: “You two, Tardelli and Gentile, you can go. But I’m surprised at you, Ancelotti.” A few sharp words and he was gone. I felt horrible. I was pale as a sheet. I went mum, didn’t feel like saying a word. I was frozen motionless in shock. I would gladly have thrown myself at his feet, on my knees, begging for forgiveness. All familiar symptoms that my teammates had seen before. Conti, a few yards down the hall, was laughing. It was a good thing he wasn’t dressed up as a mummy.

R
ome, a city of madness, the capital of my heart. I don’t know a thing about Milan, but I know everything about Rome. It was there that I learned to live, even though my relationship with my finest moments is a strange one: I don’t remember much about them. In soccer, as in life—even private life—the things that really stick with you are your disappointments, and I’m not all that interested in talking about them. The 1983 Scudetto was my first victory, but all that remains in my head are a few snapshots. And not all that many, to tell the truth. A. S. Roma, champions of Italy for the first time in forty years, and I can rest on those laurels; there are places where I’m still treated like a king. We used to eat frequently at Da Pierluigi, in Piazza de’ Ricci, and, even today, if I
dine there I might as well leave my wallet at home. They won’t let me pay; a Scudetto is forever.

In the crucial period of the season, we played a home match against Juventus, our biggest rivals for the Scudetto, and we lost. Michel Platini pulled a move a few minutes before the final whistle, Brio headed it in. Our five-point lead shrank to three, I’ll admit we started wetting our pants, but Brio received his just deserts. A policeman’s dog bit him in the tunnel, which was the very least that could have happened to him. It was a moment of high tension; people were talking and shouting, there was a general hubbub, some of the voices were angry: the German shepherd lost his temper. Sergio Brio wasn’t really very popular with the rest of us players; he was too determined on the field, he could be a little vicious. After the victory, he was leaping in the air, shouting, laughing. That poor dog saw a giant ogre celebrating, and he got scared. He went straight for the butt cheek and bit him in the ass. What a remarkable thing it was. We carried the dog in triumph on our shoulders. I may be a little off center, but when I think about the Scudetto, that’s the first image that comes into my head.

Then came the celebrations. We were returning to Rome from Genoa, where we had played the deciding match. The Appian Way was jammed solid, from Ciampino Airport to the center of the city. People were waiting for us as we pulled through in the team bus, it was just incredible. There was a symphony of car horns. They kept the decorations up in the streets for four or five months; we had given the city an excellent reason not to bother working. Cappuccino, breakfast pastry, and
Forza, Roma
. The first night, I put on a scarf, a cap, and a pair of dark glasses so as to pass unrecognized,
I hopped on my scooter and zipped around the city for hours. It’s a wonderful place, and it’s hard to win for precisely that reason—it’s a city that reacts disproportionately both to the good things and the bad things. It isn’t easy to keep your equilibrium in a place like that, but it remains a one-of-a-kind city.