I Think Therefore I Play (15 page)

“It’s a brain haemorrhage you’ve got…”

“A brain haemorrhage!!”

“I give up.”

Any little twinge and he goes straight to the medics. If he thinks he’s got the flu, he’s checking his temperature every two seconds. It’s reached the stage where I suspect he just likes using the thermometer, that it brings him some kind of pleasure. One night I was thinking about the whole thing and decided to play a joke. As soon as he’d gone off to sleep, I went and got a poster of Andrea Barzagli,
⁵⁷
one of those they give away with the
Hurrà Juventus
magazine, and pinned it up above his bed. I took a photo on my BlackBerry and sent it to a load of mates along with a three-word message: “Now that’s love.” A complete fabrication, of course. Precisely like all his ailments.

When he’s in the bathroom brushing his teeth, shaving or making himself beautiful with all his lotions and potions, I’ll burst in shrieking like a madman.

“What the fuck, Andrea? You’ll give me a heart attack.”

“Aaaaaand we’re here again…”

He’s a very anxious bloke, Matri, scared of everything. The doctor hates him. I adore him, just about as much as he loves Barzagli, because he has a priceless gift. Whenever he plays, all he needs is a single touch and he’ll get you a goal. Let him have another touch and he’ll score again. His strike rate is fantastic – he’s a hugely underrated player. If I was a president, a guy like him would be right at the top of my wish list. He comes with a billion-year guarantee.

Every so often, I tell him what I think. “Ale, you could cause any defender in the Italian league a headache.”

“A headache?”

“Don’t worry: it’s only a figure of speech.”

One of these days I’m going to secretly film him and stick the video on YouTube – it would go viral overnight. But you could watch it only once before it self-destructs: in football, Paganini dies before he’s even born.
⁵⁸
There are no repeats in this game. The things that players do can’t be wound back and watched in slow motion, and some terrible errors of judgment occur as a result. Using the helping hand of technology simply isn’t allowed under the current rules.

Referees cop a lot of flak because those in charge are welded to traditions that are more stupid than they are old. Certain individuals don’t want to go down the road of in-game replays, something that would solve at least 50% of the current problems, kill all the controversy stone dead and make our (professional) lives a lot less eventful.

Zidane was sent off for a headbutt on Marco Materazzi in the 2006 World Cup final. Everyone knows the ref, Horacio Elizondo, took that decision after his assistants saw the images on TV, even if they technically couldn’t be influenced by them. Luckily for us, they weren’t experts in lip reading.
⁵⁹

In today’s climate, having that external aid would be massive for match officials. Referees aren’t robots; the law of averages tells you they’re going to get things wrong occasionally. I’ve also never been able to understand how linesmen can watch the ball being struck and at the exact same time judge whether the player receiving it is in line with the others. Not even a four-eyed monster could manage that.

Saying ‘no’ to technology is like something out of a sporting Third World. All you’d need is a small screen where the fourth official stands. (Incidentally, I’ve always thought that ‘fourth official’ sounds like some kind of special agent rather than one of the referee’s assistants). They’d be able to settle all the most difficult questions pretty much in real time. Was the ball over the line? Was that foul committed in the box or just outside? Offside – yes or no? In all of five seconds, some real dilemmas would be reduced to absolute certainty. The ref would still take care of all the more subjective stuff, like judging whether a tackle is a foul, because TV pictures can’t give you a definitive verdict there.

I’d love to see a more modern football. But at the apex of the power pyramid, where brains wither and wallets matter, people hide behind tradition and try to keep things the way they’ve always been. They pretend they’ve forgotten we used to wear pointed studs and played with a ball that weighed a kilo. Back in those days, we didn’t have TV cameras, either. I’m not saying that John Wayne should make a science fiction film, but Steven Spielberg would certainly be in a spot of bother if special effects didn’t exist. For one thing, he couldn’t be himself.

The next step is obligatory if we’re to overcome a mindset that’s now out of date and counter-productive. One that doesn’t take account of the changes we’ve seen on pitch, but also in society in general. It’s high time that football’s ruling class stopped dozing in their armchairs. Even opening one eye would be enough, or maybe just a little bit of both. They don’t understand that their antiquated way of thinking causes huge harm to referees. It leaves them utterly on their own and in the snipers’ crosshairs. Things they don’t notice in a split-second (and, as I say, they’re human and imperfect), millions of people see on TV. The folks watching on think “He’s fucked that one up: what a total idiot.”

What they should really be thinking is: “Poor soul: he’s being forced to operate in a bygone era.”

You don’t get black-and-white sets any more. But even just realising that TV has been invented would be a major step forward for certain people. It would also help those individuals who still obsess over pictures of the Sulley Muntari ‘goal’ that wasn’t given in the now infamous Milan-Juventus match from 2012.
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Perhaps they could finally let it go and delete the photos from their phones.

At the end of every game, more in Serie A than the Champions League, it has to be said, managers and directors line up to pass comment on the referee. They talk about what’s not gone well; the mistakes that made them lose their cool. This painful vivisection of the game’s most controversial moments goes on for hours and hours. They talk about the ‘ideal decision’ and compare it to the one taken on the pitch. It’s always the same uncharitable message: the match officials got it wrong. Again. They’re completely unreliable.

There should be more honesty in what people say. Players should remember the pass they misplaced; coaches the formation they messed up. Directors should recall the bad signings they’ve made, fans some of the songs they’ve sung, and Matri his medicine box. Passing judgment on others is always a lot of fun. Looking inwards is that little bit more difficult.

We need to get one thing straight. ‘Let’s throw ourselves into the future’ can’t just be an electoral slogan or an advert for a swimming pool in Nyon or Zurich. It needs to become a way of thinking, a real desire to change for the better. Other sports have taken that leap without suffering any negative repercussions.

Let’s say Rafael Nadal’s got match point at the Australian Open. The chair umpire decides the ball’s in, awards an ace and gives Nadal victory. But Hawkeye, the electronic aid commonly used in tennis, says he’s got it wrong. Truth is the winner: the match continues, Nadal goes off and serves again without complaint, his opponent doesn’t mouth off ad infinitum, the umpire puts his hand up to say he got it wrong and the fans immediately forget the whole thing to concentrate on the next point. No losers and no controversy.

Either we start playing on a pitch made of blue cement or we use the available technology regardless of the tournament we’re competing in. One or the other.

 

56.
Striker Alessandro Matri played with Pirlo at Juventus before signing for Milan in 2013

57.
The Juventus and Italy centre-back

58.
Niccolò Paganini, perhaps the most celebrated violinist of all time, was thought to have died at the age of six but started moving again during his own funeral

59.
Materazzi is alleged to have made insulting comments to Zidane about his mother and sister, provoking the Frenchman’s angry reaction

60.
In February 2012, Juventus and Milan were locked in a battle for the title. Milan took an early lead in the head-to-head at San Siro, and seemed to have doubled their lead when a shot from Sulley Muntari clearly crossed the line, only for the match officials to wave play on. Alessandro Matri equalised late on for Juventus, who went on to win the league by four points

Chapter 20

I know how to think. I’d hate it if people looked at me and fell into the trap of assuming: “Footballer. An EEG
⁶¹
on him wouldn’t show much activity.” There are, indeed, some pretty stupid players out there – I personally know a few of them. But then there are also surveyors, architects, teachers, musicians, journalists (I know a fair few), pharmacists and butchers with the same IQ as a rock.

Generally speaking, I reckon I’m a fairly switched-on guy. I’ve an opinion about everything and I’m not ashamed to express it, defend it and, where necessary, shout it from the rooftops. I can also tell when somebody’s taking the piss out of me, or at the very least I’ll have an inkling. If I don’t have proof, I’ll go with my gut feeling, like with a certain game in La Coruña back in 2004.

At the time I was playing for Milan, and we’d travelled to Spain to take on Deportivo in the second leg of a Champions League quarter-final. We’d won the first game 4–1 and the chances of us not going through were roughly equal to those of seeing Rino Gattuso complete an arts degree.

We were already thinking about the semis, as if we’d got it all sewn up even before we flew to Galicia. A tailor-made walk in the park. We hadn’t taken into account a couple of possibilities. One, that the tailor might go mad and, two, that our own players could be struck down by collective amnesia. Every single one of them, all at the same time.

The impossible became reality. We forgot to play, and it ended 4–0 to them. They were laughing at us that night.

The first thing that needs to be said is that we did ourselves in. But, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, something doesn’t stack up. Our opponents were going at a thousand miles an hour all night, even the older players who’d never exactly been known for their ability to combine speed with stamina.

What struck me most was how they kept on running at half-time. To a man: no exceptions. When the referee, Urs Meier, blew his whistle they all shot off down the tunnel as if they were Usain Bolt. They couldn’t stand still even in that 15-minute period designed specifically to let you draw breath or at most just walk about.

We were chasing shadows all night. Their players were crazy buzz bombs flying around all over the place. I don’t have any proof, so what follows isn’t an accusation – I’d never allow myself to go that far. It’s simply a nasty thought I’ve occasionally let percolate in the intervening years.

For the first and only time in my life, I’ve wondered if people I’d shared a pitch with might have been on something. Maybe it’s all just anger that I haven’t yet managed to work through. But the Deportivo players were like men possessed, galloping towards a target that only they could see. For our part, we were completely blind, and duly brutalised.

Whatever the truth of the matter, they came up against Porto in the semis and went out.
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Within a short space of time, they’d disappeared from the face of all the major European competitions.

It does make me laugh, however, when people put the word ‘doping’ anywhere near the sacred name of Barcelona. They’re an elite circle who pass their secret down from generation to generation. The recipe is simple: to win with minimum effort, you make the ball do the work. The masters of the Camp Nou know how to run, but you never see them undertaking 70- or 80-metre sprints. At most, it’ll be 15 – they’re always looking ahead and they never tire themselves out.

I imagine that drugs are a marginal problem in Italian football. We players are the subject of continual and extensive observation. We frequently, and gladly, receive visits from CONI
⁶³
and UEFA representatives, who make us undergo surprise tests. Not just urine, mind – they also take our blood. They’ll turn up during training, make themselves known and order us to follow them. They’ll take us into the dressing room, gym or medical area, man-marking us as we provide our samples. No player ever complains, and rightly so. As far as we’re concerned, transparent test tubes and honest syringes are always welcome.

It would be really stupid to take a banned substance, both because of the trouble it would cause your conscience and the fact you’d be found out straight away. At the start of each season, the club’s medical staff give us a list of medicines we shouldn’t use. I’ll call the doctor even if I’m thinking about taking an aspirin – the danger of doing something irresponsible helps me stay ever vigilant. I’m like Matri in this regard: doping’s a disease I’ll never catch and yet it scares the life out of me.

I get angry when cyclists give interviews and accuse footballers of being spoilt. Too rich, they say, always in the spotlight, total
prima donnas
. And yet they forget that ours is undoubtedly a clean world. The stuff that’s coming out about theirs doesn’t surprise me. Ex-riders admitting to using banned substances doesn’t even make the headlines any more. People now take it as read that it’s been a widespread practice for years. And that is truly sad.

It seems they’re all at it, not least because for any normal person it would be impossible to pedal 300km a day, at maybe 40km per hour, then get up and do the same 24 hours later, and then once again the following day.

Events like the Tour de France, Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España require riders to be at peak fitness for weeks on end. Some of those mountain climbs would melt a car engine, yet the cyclists manage to keep going. They’ve talked about legalising doping, but that strikes me as an obscenity – much better to shorten the stages.

It really annoyed me when Lance Armstrong, and thereafter a procession of support riders (or supporting actors…), admitted they’d deceived their opponents. That they’d whored themselves out to certain gurus just to get on the podium. It’s not the confession that bothers me; that’s the sacred part of this whole discussion. I’m more concerned with the hundreds of times they denied it, acting all indignant and threatening reprisals and lawsuits against those who were unmasking them. In the end, the authorities stripped Armstrong of seven Tour de France titles after showing that he’d scaled the Eiffel Tower in a helicopter. Nothing to do with training. Zero titles won on the pitch, to coin a phrase ...