andyhollis - 08/05/2008 01:45
Revolution was in the air! Anticipation had been building since the fall of Germany and now as they served the last bland meal of the day, the hotel’s waiters practically skipped between the plasti-wood tables in our dreary underground bunker.
Our hotel on the Corso Italia was an indifferently crafted but solid 70’s building that had so far managed to muffle the swirling gusts of excitement infecting the normally languid inhabitants of Sorrento’s ancient and buckled alleys. As we hurried through another free (and therefore obligatory) family dinner excited whispers drifted down the basement stairs; quickly, dinner must be finished, penguin suits discarded and Forza Italia shirts donned. It was Sunday, July 9th, 2006 and nothing could stand in the way of supporting Italy in its fifth Soccer World Cup final!
We had until now been largely unaware of the quiet wind blowing across the land, lifting Goosebumps on Latin arms and bringing a brief unity to this fractured peninsular. Milanese holidaymakers simply smiled indulgently when Neapolitan deckchair minders charged Tokyo land rent figures for a piece of pebbly beach. The hat hawkers carried on secret strategy meetings with Limoncello vendors and only briefly raised an eyebrow to acknowledge a sales opportunity slipping by. They all had more important concerns than money- the World Cup was a matter of grave importance, harvesting the tourists would wait until tomorrow. Of course, during the week that we had been holidaying on the Amalfi coast I couldn’t help but notice the blue soccer shirts hanging in shop windows, but there is so much going on in these shops the significance of a few shirts had been lost on a non-Italian.
We left the cool of the hotel and stepped out on to the narrow, bus dented path. The Corso Italia, which runs practically the length of town, isn’t a big street but in Sorrento it is the main street and there are shops along almost its entire length, a soft and lovely façade alternating between chic fashion stores and creaking grocers. Above the shops are three or four layers of apartments with rusting balconies and chipped icing. Occasionally the parade of shop fronts gives way to a walled garden or grilled and gated courtyards. These courtyards are the dark and jealously guarded reserves of the locals. I’d often let my gaze follow the worn stone steps that disappeared into the gloom of these secret places and then trace a line up the through the flaking plaster to one of those rusted balconies with a carelessly open shutter. I’d try to imagine what the room looked like inside. I could see from where I stood that the ceilings were high, decorated and sexy. Sexy? There’s no other word for the private places that a tourist can never experience- it’s the essence of what you visit Italy for and yet you’re not allowed to have it- the alluring, forbidden and sexy bits beyond the digital slide show.
I was now standing beneath one of those apartments as I contemplated shepherding my family across to the west side of the street and then into the old town. The Corso Italia acts like a girdle, holding back the unruly lanes and alleys of ancient Sorrento. Every now and then one of these manages to puncture the orderly row of shops and spills an exotic scent of leather, lemons and lazy luxury on to the sun flattened main street. The alleys of Sorrento are the stone lined arteries of the town, the lifeblood of the real Sorrento. The restaurants of Piazza Tasso and the elegant hotels along the cliff top draw their vitality from this warren of vibrant industry and this is where we had chosen to join in the festivities, where we’ll see if Italy can win its fourth World Cup.
Crossing any busy street in Italy requires agility, nerve or a pretty girl at your side. Nearing my 46th birthday I possessed neither agility or the nerve to use it, but I did have a gorgeous daughter alongside me and after a few hesitant steps the traffic slowed to a stop with honking horns, whistles and a lusty Bella! A Lambretta lurched forward behind us, the beautiful pillion passenger dragging an impossibly large flag behind her. A sand coloured dog, driven to delirium by all of the excitement, snapped and slathered at the flapping tricolour, its eyes as mad as bubbling popcorn.
Safely on the other side we plunged into a surprisingly cool crush of humanity already filing down a brightly festooned lane. Space is normally at a premium in these places but the removal of street stalls for the festival had briefly freed some foot space. I say briefly because families were busy dragging chairs, tables and televisions out of their apartments to watch the game in the cool of a falling summer evening. Televisions were being strapped to the undersides of balconies or perched on hastily fixed brackets while cables snaked down drain pipes to feed the cathode canaries in their plastic cages. The bars were also being emptied of their seating. Now instead of an orderly parade of tables and chairs to one side of the pavement, rows of chairs seven or eight deep were arranged amphitheater style around a television. We managed to find some free seats and a packing crate right in the back row of a bar that I’ll probably never be able to find again and gestured to the beaming, sweating waiter. Ordering beers for the game was a simple process, the waiter would only supply large steins to cut down on unnecessary interruptions to his game viewing. I ordered one for each of us including my teenaged children and settled down for an education in what passionate support of a sports team really means.
It was now quite dark and the noise level was climbing. There was still a good half hour until kick-off but already thunder-flashes were detonating with amplified effect in the warren of narrow lanes. The red smoke from flares billowed and eddied around our chairs and scooters jostled with yapping dogs for a few precious millimeters of maneuvering space. Then suddenly it was game on and 45 minutes of singing, cursing crying and bellowing ensued. Every Englishman understands the fervor of football, but nothing can prepare you for the fever of the Italian game. There is genuine pain at every lost chance and hysterical abandonment at every success. The former came barely six minutes into the game when Malouda of France was tripped (or fell) in the penalty area. Daggers of shearing pain rained out of the sky as every person present clutched heads, breasts and offspring. Than as if to rub salt into their collective wounds the French captain, Zidane, allowed a nano-second of hope to sparkle in Italian eyes as his penalty shot struck the cross bar, only to roll lazily down and fall a couple of feet passed the line. The Squadra Azzura had conceded a goal for just the second time in the entire competition and a cataclysm to rival Vesuvius settled on the Bay of Naples. Beers were ordered, prayers offered and vendettas signed. I could see what was left of my holiday being dogged by melancholy in a land bereft of hope. Going into this World Cup the Italian squad had been mired in a revelation of match fixing sleaze that threatened to see the nation’s top clubs bundled out of the league’s top division and 13 of the World Cup squad similarly punished. It was inauspicious start to Italy’s campaign and the team had done well to rise above the gathering storm. But now the mud seemed to rise out of the turf and stick to the squad in full view of a worldwide audience.
But this is Italy, and even if the Final was being played beyond the Alps in distinctly un-Mediterranean Berlin the special gods that are reserved exclusively for Italian good fortune were still on duty. Misfortune is always just a scene setter for brilliant revival in Italy, and now Materazzi broke free of the mire, rose to meet Pirlo’s corner and headed home the equalizer. Wives were hugged, undying love reaffirmed and a barrage of fireworks unleashed. If the game had ended there I would have been satisfied that I had seen the Italians at their ungovernable best, but when you believe that all of the superlatives have been used there’s always a reason in this country to find more.
The game lurched on into extra time with neither side managing to break the deadlock. Then just 10 minutes from the final whistle Zidane, in one of the defining moments of the World Cup, felled the Italian Marco Materazzi with a headbutt to the chest. The patrons of our haphazard sidewalk arena leapt to their feat, accusations were hurled at the television and vendettas reaffirmed. But there was no need to load up dark sedans with wise guys for the journey north. Zidane was sent off and Les Bleus lost perhaps the squad’s most inspirational player.
Deciding the game ultimately fell to a penalty shoot out and it was France that blinked first, with one failed attempt to fool the goalkeeper the initiative passed to Italy. All Grosso had to do was succeed with this penalty shot and the World Cup was Italy’s.
Grosso steeled his nerves, sent the ball sailing into the net and Sorrento descended into utter chaos. Authorities anywhere else in Europe would have planned for such an event; barriers would have been in place and riot squads tucked away in handy side streets. But this was Italy and spectacular emotionalism is genetically hard-wired into the entire population. Our lane seethed with exultant supporters, a dancing, back slapping river of happy faces that spilled over tables, eddied around hissing flares and whisked away inhibitions. I saw an old man dancing a jig; he was stabbing at the night air with a long skewer, impaled on the skewer was a plucked and dressed chicken! I can imagine the scene outside his apartment when France scored the first goal of the match. The chicken had become a Gallic proxy, a vivid demonstration to wide-eyed nephews and nieces of what would happen to any French rooster that strutted into his neighbourhood. Now as I looked at him I saw an old man full of the exuberance of youth, leading a conga of citizens like a bandy bandleader with a barbeque mace.
We were carried along to Piazza Tasso and joined an immense crowd singing and dancing beneath a thousand flags. Buildings surrounding the Piazza were etched into the velvety night by the stark-white glare of exploding fireworks and sloshing against them was a grainy lagoon of happiness, a seamless carpet of bobbing faces that occasionally fractured around a carelessly ignited thunder flash or split to free a column of blaring scooters. A hearse carrying a coffin swathed in a French tricolour inched its way through and one of those comical 3-wheel micro vans struggled along with six or seven guys crammed on to the back tray. As the wheezing machine drew level with us either the passenger got out of the front, or one too many climbed on to the back, because at that moment the Piaggio became dangerously unbalanced and reared up. The cab lifted towards the stars and the giggling, swearing cargo spilled on to the cobbles.
The celebrations carried on like this as evening gave way to the first hours of morning and we wandered back to our hotel. As I dropped on to my bed I thanked my lucky stars that I had been here to see this (and that Italy had won). Through the open shutters to our balcony I could hear the horns of victory peeping and honking out across the Mediterranean, Sorrento’s Vespa Valkyries were wheeling around for another circuit.
