A memory of Alino, who announced his retirement from football on Friday.
Alessandro Diamanti, like it or not, has always been someone to talk about. One that makes people talk, one that is also divisive in some ways. He has always portrayed himself as a “rotten”, someone who does not like the established order. No one knows if he’s ever been close to a big name at any point in his career, but everyone who has seen him play is convinced that he deserved it. Because, in addition to being a somewhat out of line character, Diamanti knew how to play football well. His left was for almost ten years a flagship of the Italian province, and for a short time also of the English one. He marked the Saturday and Sunday afternoons of all football fans born between generation Y and generation Z.
Yet Serie A, Alino, reached it by chance. He had attempted the leap to B, in AlbinoLeffe, but it hadn’t gone as he expected and for this reason he had returned to his Prato, back to C2. He was 24 years old and if you’re still in C2 at 24, it’s difficult for you to really break through in football that counts. Alino’s luck, however, is Aldo Spinelli, volcanic President of Livorno. Fresh from his promotion in Serie A, Spinelli unexpectedly decides to take him to amaranth. The season will be disastrous and Livorno will relegate last in the standings, but Diamanti manages to leave a mark: a dead-leaf free-kick at the Olimpico of which the only traces left are a video grainy and the memories of Roma supporters who, also because of that goal, will see a Scudetto fade away.
The real consecration with the amaranth shirt comes the following year, in Serie B. Alino plays an extraordinary season, closed with promotion to the play-offs. He also leaves his mark in the final against Brescia, converting another incredible free-kick, almost from the corner flag.
The traces of his first Livorno experience are kept in these videos hidden in the depths of YouTube, with the Livorno logos pasted badly and Rocky’s soundtrack in the background.
Closes the season with 16 goals and releases ainterview to Sky in which his ego shines through. His desire to tell the whole world how “different” he is. For some it is rhetoric, for others it is a sincere expression of what Diamanti feels he is. A footballer who pays little attention to money, who wants to play and have fun and that he wants more than anything else the emotions.
He also writes it in the post on Instagram with which last week he announced his farewell to football: “I who have always followed the true values of football. I haven’t been a 100 trophies footballer, but I was a footballer who felt LOVED.” He writes the word “loved” in all capital letters, he adds to his having been a footballer for the people and having followed the true values of sport. We believe him why without him a decade of provincial football would have made less sense.
Believing him is a bit of an act of faith: after all, he too had his inconsistencies, such as when, after a fantastic season in Serie B with Livorno, he went to England to play with West Ham instead of staying in A and attempting the feat of salvation. Leave Spinelli,”the President to whom I am most grateful”, and goes to London, in the Premier League. Despite a very good season, he doesn’t stop for long. His restlessness, which he himself defines as madness, brings him back to Italy. first at Bresciain another troubled season that ended in relegation, and then al Bolognawhere he plays two objectively terrific seasons and also conquers the national team.
Blue is a color that Alino undoubtedly liked. Cesare Prandelli he saw it; he considered it the first change in attack, despite Giovinco’s fantastic season at Parma. For the blue CT, Cassano’s reserve slot in the 2012 European expedition was due to Diamanti. And, for a fairly long period of time, one of the most intense memories linked to the national team for us born in the mid-90s, brought about the signature of Diamonds. Italy’s fifth penalty taker in the quarter-final against England, with a ball on his left foot that weighed more than the medicine ball. He shows up on the spot, squares Hart up a bit, then displaces him with a shot that’s not angled, but dry. The ball is inexorably bagged, everyone runs to embrace the “footballer of the people” who for one evening is in the eyes of all of Europe.
Bologna was something magical for him, not only from a technical point of view. The Emilian city is where he chose to live. In an interview not so long ago, he told of the special technical understanding he established in those years with players like Di Vaio and Ramirez, and then he spoke wistfully of the farewell moment, leaving a bitter taste in his mouth for how things went.
His Bolognese version manages to snatch a “goals and skills” video decidedly compliant with the ideal we have of Diamanti.
In January 2014, in the midst of another great season in red and blue and with an armband, Diamanti drops everyone and goes to China. In retrospect, he says he was wrong: he wasn’t ready. He, so attentive to the emotions that football can give and so sensitive to people’s feelings, cannot support an almost artificial environment, where money has to make up for a lack of secular football culture. Despite a good season and a championship won, the Chinese experience doesn’t turn out to be a great idea: at 32, nothing is enough to feel old and out of the loop.
Back from China that’s probably how he feels. He begins to wander: a few months a Firenze; little more than an appearance at the WatfordIn the end Bergamowhere, just arrived, dice who wanted to go back to play in Italy and shows how much he missed the our way of living football.
Diamanti undoubtedly regretted having wandered around so much after Bologna: he wants to go back to the status of before, to decide in the provinces. But now he is no longer able to enchant and convince even in the provinces. After just one disappointing year in Bergamo, he tries another impossible feat Palermo. In the worst Palermo under Zamparini management he seems to see new stimuli, new people willing to love him as he would like. Here, the impression that he gave Diamanti once he returned from China is that he no longer wanted to be at the service of anyone, except for those who might have need of its magic. To be a rotten good we must go against the system but in favor of the weakest.
After Palermo he spends six months as a free agent. He goes back to B, where he hadn’t been for more than ten years. He goes to Perugia and play without leaving large traces. But a romantic like him, before leaving Italy for good, could not fail to return to a place where he had a good time. In 2018after more than 10 years of wandering, Alino returns with Spinelli to Livorno. Play a great season in Serie B, despite a less exciting team. He finished the season as the team’s top scorer and most capped player at the age of 35.
The right time to drop everything and leave had arrived. No more towards the English frenzy, nor the China of capitalist communism with football built in the laboratory, but towards Australia and the A-League. A slightly more than amateur championship, a completely different world from ours, where the playful aspect of football is still very strong. Find an environment where you feel comfortable, people filling stadiums, the Western United that it is this newly founded Melbourne team that crowns him their absolute idol.
In the first year, the one then interrupted by the pandemic, makes an entire nation go into raptures. At the end of the season he is crowned as best player in the league. Since then begins a gradual farewell to football, the only possible for someone like him. Diamonds mess around on Instagram, show parts of his private life, while he is becoming less and less a professional footballer. For him now it’s almost all passion, like when he said that fifty thousand euros was enough for him.
The video tribute of Western United on the occasion of the withdrawal of Diamonds.
Now the race is over, Alino. You accompanied us on many afternoons spent waiting for your left foot to light up the stadium. Your ambition to want to be a little more romantic, a little more nostalgic, to still want to convey ineffable emotions and sensations has hit the mark. It shook us. Someone loved you, some others didn’t, but for many you have represented a piece of life. As you wrote on Instagram, now that piece is finished, are you ready to take on other challenges with “passion, hard work, humility, enthusiasm, healthy madness and lots of laughter”.