The Italian George Best tells each other: “Today the games are all the same, the coaches want soldiers, there is no longer desire to amaze. And when Aldi wanted to make me cut hair …”
“Give, Zigo, come with us in Udine!”. “No, guys, today’s football no longer excites me. You go and shout ‘Forza Verona’ for me too”. Greetings follow, patches on the shoulders and handshakes. The Hellas supporter group, traveling to Udine to follow the first championship of Zanetti’s team, made a detour on the route. Which has transformed, as often happens, on a pilgrimage: in Oderzo, province of Treviso, a country of birth and life of Gianfranco Zigoni, called God Zigo, the Italian George Best who, in the 60s and 70s, made defenders go crazy (opponents) and coaches (his).
Zigoni, the audience began in front of her as if it were a guru. Happy?
“I am now a kind of monument, they come here on the trip, admire the mural that two artists who have dedicated me, speak to me, ask me old days, that I call ‘good times’, we make a glass and then goodbye. Being still remembered at eighty years, I am pleased, I can’t hide it. Matter of vanity? Maybe, I have to reflect on it”.
What did the “good times” have compared to the present?
“Meanwhile, I was younger, and this is important. And then they were more human times, and football was also more human. Now the players are all robots. The technology has screwed us, is this the truth. Where is the imagination over? Where did the dribbling end up? Where is the desire to amaze?”.
Today’s football is more flat, more monotonous.
“Side steps, back passages, never once you see one pointing the opponent and overcoming it with a fake, with an invention. I, in this football, could not have played. Imagine you, an irregular like me, a hot head … Now the coaches want soldiers at their orders, and that’s it. You’re there. You are there, you give the ball to that, you don’t move. Sometimes I wondered: they enjoy, I am having fun. Footballers I don’t know.
Like when he scored a goal with a left shot at the intersection of the poles, in a Verona-Vicenza, and then he influenced the tunnel of the changing rooms. How to say: end of the show.
“I was done like this, and I am still done so because the character does not change. On that occasion I dribbed four opponents and I scored a missile in the seven. Tell me: what could I have done more? And then I went to take a shower before the others, so I found the hot water”.
Do you remember the time that he went to the bench with fur and cowboy hat?
“The fault of the coach Ferruccio Valcareggi. The previous Sunday I was disqualified, which happened to me often, and the team had won. So Valcareggi comes to me and makes me: ‘Zigo, a team that wins does not change. Today you are out’. And me: ‘How do you allow yourself to keep out the strongest player in the world? You will see what I do …’ head, and in my pocket I had a pack of cigarettes “.
A reckless life, his.
“More than reckless, always to put it with Vasco Rossi I would say that it was an exaggerated life. I did not miss anything. Cigarettes, alcohol, women, beautiful machines, success. Once upon a time, I was at Juve, the Italian manager Allai arrives and makes me: ‘If you cut your hair, I give you one hundred thousand lire’. My answer: ‘I am not on sale. And these are two hundred thousand lire, The one who has the most dear.
Nobody, but is another world.
“Yes, today there is no fantasy of the past. In the 60s and 70s the imagination was everywhere, it was in the gestures and it was also in words. Now, however, we live as inside a computer, everything is approved”.
Doesn’t football distract it?
“The games are all the same. This is why they bore me. I, who since child cheers for Inter, have not even seen the final of the Champions Cup against Paris Saint Germain. I knew I wouldn’t get excited. I read that a great gimmick of the PSG coach was to let the ball throw lateral after the kick to start immediately to start offensive. Jokes? No, this football no longer does for me, better to see the youthful kids play, here in Oderzo, even if they are the victims of the coaches who claim to cage them in schemes and modules.
Do you think he wasted his talent?
“I would say yes. Santamaria, the defender of Real Madrid, marched me and I didn’t show him the ball. He said: ‘This hijo de puta It’s like Pelé ‘. And instead this hijo de puta He only played a game in the national team “.
“I turned with a gun in my pocket, a Colt 45. At Roma, during the retreats to Grottaferrata, I bored myself and shot the street lamps. I loved Guevara and I declared it openly: imagine what the borghesucci thought of me. Of the money I never imported me anything. Those I gained I spent them all. In short, I was an anomaly of football.
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