“Every goal is always an invention, it is always a subversion of the code:
every goal is inevitability, electrocution, amazement, irreversibility”
Pier Paolo Pasolini
A beautiful match, like few in recent years, is coming to an end. Taranto and Benevento scored two goals on each side and even if they don’t seem to be satisfied, time is running out. The clock shows the 94th minute. Taranto has just missed a sensational opportunity on the counterattack. For his part, the Benevento goalkeeper, Paleari, caresses the ball that was conveniently handed to him. A couple of rebounds to gain a few precious seconds and recover from the strain. Then he throws it long, far, beyond midfield. The aim is clear: “That a free kick is earned, the ball is pushed forward. Find ways to waste time.” May someone finally narcotize the match. It’s done now, just a handful of seconds left. There is Calvano, however, who claims to subvert the diabolical Samnite plan. The midfielder launches into a slide like a lion on a dying gazelle during a famine, as if finding a fountain after days of walking in the desert; or, perhaps, more like the ball was about to cross the goal line in a final of Champions. He undermines the opponent’s plan by taking her out of her clutches, causing her to hurtle towards the feet of Fiorani, who extends it first to Orlando who in turn invents a magnificent high through ball with his left foot. Simeri’s shot is perfect on the offside line and he finds himself flying towards the Curva Nord with only the opposing goalkeeper in front of him, while the linesman’s flag continues to guarantee the balance of the run. The attacker seizes the moment and with a small kick that accompanies the dance of the ball that has just bounced, drawing a perfect parabola, goes over the desperate exit of Paleari who, once overtaken by the ball, slaps the air with a reckless movement , worthy of bovine spongiform encephalopathy: the newspapers called it mad cow disease. The whole stadium remains in suspense.
La Curva gave everything, especially in the second half. The expenditure of energy is felt but we don’t give up, on the contrary we encourage each other to sing. Imbecile: this is how we should define those who think that collective states of exaltation are a loss of consciousness rather than enhanced social consciousness. The stopwatch shows almost thirty seconds after the 94th minute. Fueling yourself with the battle that spreads from the field to the stands makes you feel or sense that your teammate is doing the same things and it infects you. This doesn’t make us lose the sense of reality around us: it intensifies it. It makes it more real than real.
Simeri’s lob arches, crosses the goal line and sinks into the cobweb that decorates it. How this sequence of events can produce a synchronous explosion of energy remains a mystery. In the bodies of thousands of people something new seems to be experienced Manhattan Project. A festive manhunt begins on the pitch for Simeri, who scores a double on his debut. He doesn’t know what to do. Classic dilemma of those who find themselves managing a rarely experienced adrenaline rush. From his shoulders and from the bench his teammates reach him, try to catch him but he is like a All Black who looks for the goal, frees himself from the grips and heads forcefully towards the door that divides the pitch from the Curva Nord.
On the other side of the fence anything happens. The voices turn into a scream of disbelief. Some do not recognize their own voice, as if their body was possessed by a dark spell. Strangers hugging. Many are torn. Few remain standing. Some cry. A man hugs his son and sobs. The child lets out a scream that empties his lungs and fills his heart, while his little voice merges with that of thousands of people. The roar is a white noise that contrasts the crazy writhing of the bodies and hovers in the air, unhinging the unpleasant February sky that persists in the evening over Salinella. In the casino a boy falls badly and maybe hesquascia” an ankle but this doesn’t stop him from continuing to celebrate, even after the intervention of the nurses who were called back, no one knows how in the middle of the brothel: from the stretcher he will continue to wave his arms exultantly. A girl and two children sense Simeri’s movement and are the first to reach the door of the North. They and Simeri, compressed one by the heat of the benders and the other by that of their companions, find themselves separated only by an infamous plexiglass. On both sides hundreds of hands beat on the thick plastic that not even the monkeys at the Safari Zoo can handle. No choir manages to gain a foothold, the disorderliness of the people is a raging river that overwhelms any possibility of coordination. A couple of bombs explode in the anti-stadium. Some smoke bombs color some spots in the ecstatic crowd red. Chaos reigns supreme for very long moments. Distraught people show off their clothes torn by the heat of delirious embraces like relics. Other images like these make their way but trying not to leave out any would mean abstracting ourselves from what is happening. To remember them all would, indeed, perhaps be miserable; just as, in the same way, what happens makes the figures of imperturbability petty.
None of this actually happened. Or rather, all true until Simeri’s perfect shot. However, the attacker loses time for the dive and hits the ball when it is already too late. The lob attempt is harmless for Paleari who blocks the ball with ease. A handful of seconds and the referee sends everyone to the locker room. The Curve is a succession of open mouths and dismayed faces. It would seem the perfect metaphor for the history of Taranto, for that disheartening lesson in sport – and life – that a bastard instinct would suggest we learn. We often come within an inch of joy but that’s where we stop, as if it were written in our destiny.
An exultation like the one we have imagined is very similar to orgasmic and chaotic delirium: it does not have the form of an isolated autoerotic gesture, but rather that of an orgy, where the tactile and prehensile dimension of the other – the embrace, the push, the jerk – becomes a constituent part of a joyful collective hysterical trance. If the decisive exultation is an orgiastic orgasm then what we have experienced all too often is the intervention of a respectable destiny that behaves like a raid of morality which interrupts everything at the most beautiful moment to bring everyone back to composure, to the discipline of the bodies, to the parsimony of emotions, to the restoration of good manners. Interventions against collective desire and pleasure are so infamous that one wonders what the real indecency is.
They say that history is not made with “ifs”. But where is it written? Scholars say it is not a historiographically rigorous practice. Barbero says it’s “bar talk”, but at the same time admits that, after all, we do it all the time. Thinking about what could have been or what will be is, together with laughter, perhaps the only thing that distinguishes us from other living beings, with all the cons that this entails. Getting lost in fantasies can be harmful, but ultimately all beautiful things contain this risk. In any case, however, fantasizing has the power to stimulate our desires and nourish the collective imagination. When asked what utopia was, Eduardo Galeano – Uruguayan, socialist, singer of football – replied: “She is on the horizon. I take two steps closer, she takes two steps away. I walk ten steps and the horizon moves ten steps further. No matter how much I walk, I will never reach it. What is utopia for? This is exactly what it’s for: walking.”. Utopia is a kind of dreamlike place populated by our best desires. Imagining is a way to nourish them and keep them alive more than ever. A bit like what the steps did, which expresses the very strong and desperate desire of a part of the community that in their hearts does not give up: “Daspo for life for Acciaierie d’Italia”, reads the banner. And perhaps it is worth more than Simeri’s third goal. However, yet another stupid ban imposed on the visiting fans, in this case the Benevento fans, is worth less than nothing, to whom the away match had first been opened, then with tickets already sold and at the last moment, the same possibility mentioned above was precluded. That is, to fuel with dreams and desires the desire to be able to change the sterile state of things, to animate with their presence, with their passion, with their color that arid desert into which they have transformed football, increasingly full of sterile and stupid rhetoric, increasingly empty of feeling.
STiT text
Photo by Fabio Mitidieri
I like:
I like Loading…
2024-02-03 15:55:15
#TarantoBenevento #description #roar
