On and Off the Pitch

By: Marco | October 5th, 2009

antonio_conte

You can say the title is corny but hey I could think of worse. It has certainly been a while. Even Daryl forgot about me. I have to confess though. I have had a hell of a past few months. After last season I found myself burned out when it came to football. It wasn’t the sport itself but I noticed everything had lost its excitement. I suffered from depression, I still do, but it was getting bad. I decided that I needed to do something and do it quick.

After a few days of planning and organizing vacation time from work (as if there is such a thing) I went out and I travelled. I first flew to London, England and caught up with a friend of mine and hardcore Derby supporter. I also had the chance to catch up with some friends from a few years ago. We hadn’t seen each other in years and it was great to get back together and keep in contact. After two weeks I flew to Palermo and spent some time with my grandfather. I hadn’t seen him in a few months and he certainly helped put things in to perspective. A former spook / career military man he definitely knew how to put it the right way. I spent the next few days fishing and generally relaxing. I even managed to play some football with some guys from around the town. Scored a controversial Inzaghi-esque offside goal in true Pippo style and had a blast. Just being on the pitch felt great.

I will spare you the rest of the story but if you want to hear it just ask me. I travelled to Amman, Jordan then back to Palermo, up the Milan, back down to Palermo then back to London before heading back to the U.S. Spent a lot of money and spent a lot of time travelling but I found something that I was looking for all along.

I was at the Milan – America friendly in Atlanta and I watched Milan get tossed by Chelski in the tournament but still retained hope about the season. Don’t get me wrong I had a chance to meet Leonardo a year or so ago and he was a really nice guy. Also he was a pretty good back for Milan back in the glory days and is a class act. You have to be in order to sit between two of the biggest arseholes in English football history (I forget the names). But as a Football Manager I consider myself to have much more experience than him. I even guided Milan to 13 CL trophies, 11 Serie A’s and 6 Italian Cups among others in the past three seasons of FM. Can Leonardo or Ancelotti match that? Nope

I was disheartened after the first few Milan fixtures, and I still am, but I regained that passion for football from unlikely sources. Accrington Stanley. Yes now you are saying “Who the f*** are Accrington Stanley?” And I am supposed to respond “Exactly.” And finish my milk. Even though the only milk I like is chocolate milk, when it comes to drinking milk that is. Igea Virtus. Alessandria. Sunderland. Atalanta. Palermo. Of course I have always been a Milanista / Palermitani and I always will. But after watching Igea Virtus, reading Sunderland: A Club transformed, following a little bit of Alessandria’s (another FM LLM favorite) push to the upper leagues and thinking back at last season’s Atalanta I found that passion. I always worried about winning and losing. I would always get pissed off after Milan lost or Team Africa / South America won the Scudetto again. But I realized that football isn’t always about winning that big trophy.

If you obsess over winning championships that you probably won’t win and destroy yourself if you don’t you miss out on the real stuff. I realized that footy is about the battles, the passion, the fans and the future prospect of glory if not end of season glory. Sometimes three points after a seven game losing streak will feel like a championship. It’s about loving a team with all of your heart and continuing to support them even if they are in the doldrums. Even if Milan get relegated, go bankrupt (I heard Qadaffi bought some shares. God knows he can’t even find his way back to his tent.) and become the next Pro Vercelli, I will always love to wear the red and black. I will proudly wear my scarf even if I despise the owners and manager. Even if Atalanta never gets that scudetto, even if Alessandria get relegated back to the Serie C2/A.

Even if Igea Virtus disappears from professional football and even if Sunderland drop down to the Blue Square I won’t forget them or stop loving them. I won’t forget about that Igea Virtus match under the beautiful Sicilian sun. I won’t forget about Roy Keane having his back against the wall and pulling Sunderland forward when the odds were stacked. I won’t forget about those 698 hours of Football Manager 2009 over the last year or so. I won’t forget about the 2,123 hours of Football Manager 2008 last season either. I will rant on how I guided Alessandria to the Serie A but never reached the CL. I will gloat about Robert Cau, Bellini and co who fought it out in the Serie C/B. I will boast about the regen striker who carried my team to near glory and became one of the greatest strikers in Serie A history. The same striker who I sold for 56M euros and bought back for under 1M once he became old. He finished his career with us by the way.

The beautiful game is just that…beautiful. No other sport that I have watched conveys the human emotion and the struggles and wins of life as that game does. On the outside it’s just a game with passionate fans. On the inside it’s full of epic battles and struggles, legacies that have been continued and others that have been tarnished, epic rivalries and important matches; decisive wins and heart breaking losses; big signing transfers that bust the wallet and the ten thousand euro signing that is twice the player of any of your current ones. Udinese – Atalanta and Roma – Milan may seem like early season fixtures but you can already find interesting stories. Atalanta needs to win and capitalize on last season’s successes. With zero wins, three draws and four losses they desperately need to scrape it and get a blanket before Christmas comes. The odds are already stacked against them and the season is definitely going to be a rough one. After Udinese they get chances against Parma, Livorno and Cagliari before heading up against Juventus. Those are nine points that we should be able to get. Udinese are looking great and will probably get the better of us and I doubt, unless we pull a Palermo, that we can stand up to Juventus.

Milan are definitely hurting. We simply haven’t been able to get it right. I will let Gianfraco do the Milan commentary, I am waiting on his emotional outburst and rage quit or I will have to do it myself at the end of the season. Again this might seem corny and nobody will probably read this but if you do just take one thing out of this for me. Even if you already do it or know it just remind yourself. Love the game. Don’t obsess over trophies and ultimate glory / perfection. You won’t ever reach them. Once you get there you will want to climb the next mountain but what happens when all the mountains are gone? Remember that a midseason fixture is more than just a game. Remember that it’s more than just two teams playing on a field.

So to sum it up I am back and I found my passion again. Kaka and Ibra may have left but its not the end of the world. When the next fixture comes around I will slap up a nice and pretty match preview and then have a dismal, depressing and egotistical post-match review blaming the refs, calling it match fixing and gloating that I am twice the manager of Antonio Conte, Luigi Del Neri and Angelo Gregucci combined before getting really drunk and singing Atalanta ultra songs. After that I will probably send in my FM resume to both Milan and Atalanta and wait for a response.