In the heart of the Campania capital a social center has become a sporting and life laboratory. One hundred children were removed from the street and on the street they are back, but to play football
Some football teams are a state of mind, others only the name of a place, still others the titles that win, some is the style; The Spartak San Gennaro, on the other hand, is a school of all things. Because it is a nomadic idea that is enriched on the street. The great energy lies on a field in the heart of Naples that the waves of tourists do not see, that the Municipality does not help, but, despite everything, it resists. Playing football without paying, finding rules and freedoms that school often cannot give, chasing the emotion without limits and forgetting the indolence that, as Jorge Bernardo Gruffa, the ball of the ball in Argentina said, is the enemy of evolution. Everything mixes in the Spartak San Gennaro: class, sex, I believe, rivalry of territory and family, geography and history, what matters is dribbling, the team, the fun, in a subversion that arises from a protest on the stairs of a church by a group of children, is knotted to a woman, Stefania Sessa, who unlike an obtuse parish priest understands that if they play, there is no less time. The indolence and especially if they play then they dream. Stefania’s ability meets one of the children who had not played in the past, Luigi Volpe for all Chicco, and who had understood what had been lost as an adult. The rest made the juvenile prison Filangieri, the one where Chicco had been one of the last locked up before the cessation, and years later he was busy to make the shuttle freed, a social center. The children who protested on the stairs of the Oblati Church – with a tear – could have a field and also a team that put Spartaco together, the Soviet Union and San Gennaro.
noise and hope
–
Parties in twenty in 2017 are now more than a hundred and not only do football, noise and hope, but they say to all the others who are not alone, where all the others are also the Palestinian kids of Gaza, because Spartak is twinned with the Al Haddaf Team, a team of children by Beit Lahia, in the north of the strip. Where chicco consumed his hour of air, he was born, plays and trains a team of freedom with a very strong social request. The talent needs a place that allows him to show off the virtues and hide the defects. The Spartak San Gennaro is the trust that many kids was missing, who opens the heads and lungs, dissolves the legs and discarded the side without falling. The ball runs, they have fun and in the meantime they build a future. Football is made of human beings who play and find answers as Jonathan Franzen writes in “freedom”: “Once those feelings had been inculcated in depth […] You knew the answer to the question, the answer was the team, and every insignificant personal concern was set aside “. This happens to the field of the Ventaglieri Park, in the Montesanto district, where Spartak moved, a field that seems to have been excavated in a volcano, is in the center between a tuff wall, one of trees and two of houses. The workouts are a cross between” The Compagnia dei Celestini “by” Fontanarrosa, every face a story, every story a novel. Fatons to the children: “I met Luigi Volpe, manager of our team, who talked to me about a free football school project, born a few months ago. I accepted immediately. I liked the idea of being able to create a football project that had the boys at risk at the center, those left on the margins. “But training on the concrete, making the shifts, over time becomes more and more complicated.” Last year we participated in a call for the use of a field in the Capodimonte district. We were among the winners, but we didn’t think we had to pay 12 thousand euros per year. If the mayor and his junta approved the exemption for a non-profit like us, we would have solved almost all problems. “Alessandro, Sasà for children, draws with pragmatism what you need, because everyone talks about Spartak, but few help them concretely. To do it, he would be enough to have the determination of the team captain, Alessandra Cacchione, almost 12 years and 26 goals in this season, horse tail, Miyazaki and a right that nails the goalkeepers, law De Amicis by mixing the plots, shows his best goals, which preserves on the mobile phone, his idol is Dries Mertens. Others “, but you can see that she has recently started, loves David Neres, but plays from full -back.
Dreams and idols
–
Even the third footballer plays in defense, as a central one, Giovanna Esposito (10 years), has Lionel Messi as IDOLO: “When I am happy, I feel like him, I shoot the punishments, but when I grow up I want to become a dentist or lawyer”. Also Vittorio de Stengo (11 years old) loves Messi and Batman in a crasis between superheroes, plays with the shorts of the Lakers and the Napoli shirt, chaos is his specialty: “My plan A is being a footballer, the boxer B, the C cannot be said”. Instead, Francesco Mazzocchi (12 years old), blonde, “Terzino both on the right and on the left”, Ronaldo the Portuguese as an idol, has only one plan: “Winning, I want to win, play and win”. And he says it with a smile that weakens his determination. None of the children will appoint an Italian football idol, their relationship with the national team is what Americans have with Russian satellites dispersed in space, and the only coach beyond Sasà, of course, who would accept is Antonio Conte. They have dribbling as a religion and really seem Christians under the Roman Empire, given that in Serie A Italian dribbles are counted on one hand. Napoli is their horizon, both as a football dream and as a cheering, even if for many the example is placed, only Yamal undermines the leadership. They come from poor or bourgeois families, but they are all the same entering the field that bears the name of Mohammed al Sultan, coach of Al Haddaf, and his brother Ba-Haa, footballer, killed by the Israeli bombings on Gaza, who had a Neapolitan funeral right on the Ventaglieri camp, submerged by a thousand red poppies like the Piero of the war sung by De André. But the story is interrupted by the attacker Dario Romano (10 years) who wants to let us know “I broke my arm and for this I played only three games, but I scored two goals”. Gabriele Zaccone (13 years old), defender, left foot, “call me zac, I choose Yamal of mentality, no, none of the family comes to see me, but it is better, because when I play football it is like when a girl kiss”. Romantic, decisive, silent, clean in the interventions. The other Yamalist is Ettore Errico (8 years old), a patch on the left eyebrow arch, red jersey, cursaro gaze, a love for dribbling and Mané Garrincha “because my father showed me a documentary, Ah, I also know Pelé, look that five minutes ago I took a crossbar”, his brother Ernesto (11 years), he prefers Nico Williams. Together they look like Benni’s “finesse brothers”. The enthusiasm of the boys of Spartak San Gennaro is endless, alternate between the field and the bench, words and ball, it seems to be in the crater of the volcano, in the Bombasí field, invented by Fontanarrosa, only Best Hama Seller is missing that says: “Let’s enjoy these moments, which will remain in memory, when in the future we will find ourselves to relive all this”.
© RESERVED REPRODUCTION