“The canaglie”, by Angelo Carotenuto: Lazio, Chinaglia, Maestrelli and the Years of Lead
Review by Patrick Bateman
“Le rogue” ( Sellerio , 2020) starts from afar and fits into a well-defined historical period. It goes from 1971 to 1976 but it is not just a cross-section of those years. In fact, what happened in those times is at the same time the son of what has already happened and the father of what is about to happen. It is the story of a city, Rome, but not only. A city that in that luster has seen so many, welding crime and worldly news, filling the pages of newspapers with excesses and paradoxes. These are the Years of Lead and, between crime and opposing extremisms, the streets are dripping with blood. It almost seems that every day touches a different one: right, left, fasces, comrades, journalists, magistrates, police.
In parallel to this desolating picture graying with lead and red with blood, another story unfolds. It is not a political story, even if it has some slight adherence to it; after all, in that period it is difficult to imagine that there is something totally detached from commitment. We are talking about sport, and specifically about football and a team: Lazio. In the 1971-72 season the Biancocelesti played in Serie B, they did not enchant and struggle to conquer the top positions of the standings, which would mean promotion to Serie A. Already from that year in Serie B we understand many things. The environment is demanding, the presidency must make up the accounts, the team is made up of particular figures, among which the coach, Tommaso Maestrelli, and the center forward Giorgio Chinaglia stand out. On Chinaglia you can write a separate book (and some have even done it): talented, short-tempered, self-centered, courageous, capricious… without a doubt iconic. Equally sui generis is Maestrelli, a coach but above all the father of a band of rowdy, prone to braggart, swagger and easy brawl. Yet from that Serie B championship, which then ended with promotion to Serie A, a winning and decidedly romantic cycle will start, which will see its highest point with the conquest of the Scudetto in the 1973-74 season.
Angelo Carotenuto, a journalist and writer born in 1966, creates a documented, inspired and moving novel, telling the picaresque events of the Maestrelli gang through the eyes of the photographer Marcello Traseticcio (homage to the photographer of the “Dolce Vita” Marcello Geppetti). Men and footballers like Wilson, Martini, Petrelli, D'Amico are perfect characters for a book or a film, able to make their feet talk on the pitch but also their hands, inside and outside the green rectangle. Using a linguistic register that draws heavily from the Roman dialect language, the author creates a tasty hybrid between fiction and news, which captures both football fans and the most demanding readers. In addition to the solid narrative and documentary structure, the rendering of the delicate balance inside the Lazio dressing room is also satisfactory, always divided between discussions and protagonists, but united by the desire to win and by the figure of Maestrelli, a coach who was able to tame with firmness and affection many eccentric and conflicting personalities. In fact, the rivalries between the so-called "two clans" (Chinaglia on one side, Martini on the other), the training to the death on Friday, the passion for weapons and the matches that, for better or for worse, have made history (the heated derbies against Roma, the painful victory with Foggia which earned the Scudetto, the riot against Ipswich Town which meant exclusion from the European Cups, just to name a few). However, the successes are also accompanied by defeats, not just sporting ones, which will lead to the end of this crazy and unrepeatable epic. Chinaglia's farewell, who ended up overseas to have fun with the NY Cosmos shirt and make his American wife Connie happy; the death of Maestrelli, bent after a long fight against cancer and the absurd end of King Cecconi, hit by a bullet fired by a jeweler in circumstances still not entirely clear, perhaps due to a joke that ended in tragedy.
And in filigree Italy of the 70s, with a political awareness that is both strong and immature, an angry Italy ready to shoot for ideology, desperation, wickedness or fear, an Italy that bitterly becomes aware of the precariousness of the myths of well-being and solidity of institutions (social, political, family). All this and more is relived on paper in one of the most beautiful surprises of the recently concluded literary 2020.
The post “Le canaglie”, by Angelo Carotenuto: Lazio, Chinaglia, Maestrelli and the Years of Lead appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/recensioni/le-canaglie-di-angelo-carotenuto-la-lazio-chinaglia-maestrelli-e-gli-anni-di-piombo/ on Sat, 06 Feb 2021 04:47:00 +0000.