“Aeroplinino!” Vincenzo Montella.
Born in Pomigliano d’Arco in the Naples province of Italy in June 1974, Vincenzo Montella always dreamt of being a professional footballer, of playing in Serie A. Although during his childhood days, a natural shortness of stature often saw him relegated to the role of goalkeeper, he would mature into the rapacious predator type of forward esteemed by Italian football fans, and a legend for the tifosi of Roma’s Curva Sud in the Stadio Olimpico. In his time with I Giallorossi, Montella would score just short of a century of goals, and each would be marked with his trademark celebration, arms stretched wide, mimicking an aeroplane. The fans celebrated once more as their joy took flight, thanks to their ‘little airplane.’ Continue reading →
Gareth and the Amazing Non-Technicolour Waistcoat – Any Dream Will Do!
On 30 July 1966, England beat West Germany to win the Jules Rimet Trophy and be crowned Champions of the World. Alf Ramsey had delivered on the pledge he made when appointed to the position of manager of the national team three years before that tumultuous day. The names of the red-shirted heroes who graced the Wembley turf on that day are etched into the memories of all England football fans. All are lauded. All are loved and, as the intervening years and an increasing number of them succumbed to the inevitable battle against mortality, so many have been mourned. In 1966, fans of the game across the country were in love with the team that represented them, and bestowed such joy upon their followers. It was a deep love, and such things last for ever. Don’t they? Continue reading →
MTV, poetry and Johann Cruyff’s Dream Team – A new Ballad of Reading Gaol.
I’ve heard it said that non-football fans are – to paraphrase Bart Simpson – the MTV Generation, knowing neither highs nor lows. Anyone not hooked up with a femme fatale of a football club – someone upon which you pour your affections, only to be scorned and disheartened at so many turns – is incapable of understanding the all-too-brief but euphoric highs of success for the object of your adoration. Sometimes though, albeit so very rarely, those highs linger and join together to offer an enticing view of a world full of joy and bereft of despair and disappointment, a sunlit upland that will be yours for ever and ever; your club becomes dominant – the paragon, a beauty inarnate, the iconoclast that kicks down the rules of normal roller-coaster emotions. Into the mid-nineties, the Barcelona team of Johann Cruyff was such a team. Continue reading →
Gary Thacker 