ROMA. Ten years have now passed. Football is an era. Yet the memories of that experience at Udinese, which lasted from 2010 to 2012, are still alive in Ivan Provedel, goalkeeper of Cecchini di Pasiano, who on Sunday will face Lazio against the club where he grew up as a goalkeeper.
It is true that the 28-year-old from Pordenone had already challenged the bianconeri in the past, first with the Empoli shirt, then with the Spezia jersey. However, this time he will find them at the Olimpico and as a player of a high-ranking team, which represents a city like Rome. And he will do it after being called up for the first time in his career in the national team. All this cannot be indifferent to him if he thinks about the times of Rizzi.
Then he was brought to the black and white by Angelo Trevisan – still in charge of the nursery – and by Michelangelo Mason, at the time coach of the goalkeepers in the Udinese youth sector. Provedel was at Liapiave, a company in the province of Treviso, where he came from Pordenone to fulfill his dream: that of becoming an extreme defender. In fact, among the lizards he was a striker, a role he no longer wanted to play. The player was then 16 years old: in the two seasons spent at Zebretta, in which he defended the Primavera posts, he recorded enormous progress. And he was not taken for granted, since many claimed he was already too late to pursue another career.
Mason played a decisive role in this, so much so that Provedel still considers him his teacher. An aspect that his mother Elena also wanted to underline, commenting on her son’s recent call-up in blue.
In the summer of 2012, Udinese had to decide whether or not to sign the first professional contract of his career to the boy from Pordenone, who in the meantime has come of age. He chose to turn his attention to Simone Scuffet and Alex Meret, strengths of the nursery, two and three years younger than Ivan respectively. Provedel, therefore, had to change the air and, after courting Sacilese, in Serie D, Maurizio Costanzi, at the time manager of the Chievo nursery, entered the scene. He negotiated with Udinese the passage of the goalkeeper and easily found an agreement, which also included the passage to the “CEO” of Mattia Bedin, midfielder born in 1994.
In the path of Cecchini’s number one this was a key step: in the season played in Veneto, with coach Nicolato on the bench (current U21 coach) Provedel graduated in 2013 Italian Primavera champion. However, Udinese had kept 50% of the ownership, only to give up the card altogether when Thereau’s passage from the Gialloblù to the Friulians took place (in 2014).
From the possibility of going down to Serie D, once out of the Zebrette nursery, to becoming one of the goalkeepers of the National team: sport also allows you to witness these trajectories, on paper impossible even to predict, but which in the case of Provedel have become reality.