An expatriate from Asti, I always read the news from Asti with tenderness and affectionate anger. There are news that bring me the aroma of the city, where something of the twentieth century remains attached. Friends invite me to attend the football match between the cockerels (the symbol is always that, well, reassuring statement for a nostalgic) and the Novara. So I’m going to get warmed up by the past. The opponent then attracts me, he seems to me to be impregnated in turn with something of the nineteenth-century: the blue … and the symbol of the Savoy on the shirt … The name of an ancient player of theirs from the 60s I think, wreck I was indelibly left with the stickers of the Corriere dei Piccoli: Udovicich, certainly an Istrian exile. In short, the Risorgimento has to be reviewed in 90 minutes.
I can’t say I’ve ever been a true fan of Asti, but the fact that 40 years ago it had irreducible supporters despite mediocre cabotage already seemed to me a remarkable title of merit. Come on: for a true fan, continuity is everything and loyalty in the perennial distress and small, rare satisfactions are enough to give vast emotional rewards. So on a bright Sunday in January I set off towards the Bosia stadium.
I rearrange the ground of indigenous football memories. There is no need to fill in notebooks, there are some names that, I don’t know why, were saved from the sinking of memory instead of others: a couple of full-backs, Unere and Avere, but I already miss the median; Chiaranda, Dellevedove, Zanutto who I think was the captain of Asti, one of those who have never changed teams out of loyalty and not out of brocade.
The stadium is the same, worn as it was then, perhaps more. The “popular” (an extraordinary denomination between the classist and the revolutionary) are modestly covered by enormous advertising sheets: crumbling, unusable they tell me. We therefore dock with benevolent interclassism in the modest splendor of the grandstand. There is also a curve, always Luciferian evocative of incandescent bolge. In fact, the Public Order has literally caged the Novara ultras there. It seems to me excessive prudence, they have quiet, bourgeois, permanent aspects. Like those of Asti, who are on the opposite side with a red and white flag that could pack them all. They have the domestic airs of drinking wine and ham rather than invasion of the field. Despite the defeat, fortunately, they do not seem disheartened, intoxicated, depressed.
Even for the Series, time does not seem to have passed. We are always in D like a beached whale. I ignore the intermediate story but I am reminded that the “project”, as they say today, has remained limp. Football is a sung sport, sung out loud. Even Asti, I discover with tenderness, has a patriotic song, to be used for the overture and the exit from the scene. I also imagine for the goals, but Sunday was unfortunately stingy. It may also be for this reason that the choirs of the fans were not taking their breath away. Except to rail against the referee with an iterative list of insults that are anything but inexpressive.
Behind me in the stands they decipher the formations according to an informed registry system: «This is a 2002 …» (enthusiasm); “This is a 1998 …” (the tone becomes mercilessly liquidating). Curious vocabulary: the players, like the vintages of wine or cars, when you go to buy a used one. We only need to add the mileage of the medians and midfielders.
Of the protagonists, all willing, I was struck by the goalkeeper of Asti. Goalkeepers are not like other players and not just because they can touch the ball with their hands. There is no middle ground for them. They know they can get off the field any time either as heroes or reprobates. Asti saved a penalty, a feat that one carries forever like Vittorio Veneto’s medal. Not only that: he also sacrificed himself on the enemy’s shoes when the latter tried to hit him with the ball back. Noble gesture. Goalkeepers always have epic nicknames: “the black spider”, “Dracula” … Since yesterday, the boy from Asti also deserves one. —