Carlo Ancelotti_ The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius - Alessandro Alciato [42]
“OK, Paolo, let’s just wait for him.” The important thing, after all, is your health, right?
Zizou showed up ten minutes later, apologized for being late, and the bus pulled out.
Zidane was the greatest soccer player I ever coached—the sole inhabitant of a very different planet. Before every match, the Avvocato came into the locker room, said hello to Alessandro Del Piero, and then went straight to Zizou. He was head over heels in love; he took Zizou aside and had a little chat. It was a scene that I witnessed dozens of times. Often, Agnelli was accompanied by his grandsons John and Lapo Elkann; they would appear, greet the team, and go talk to Zidane. They were just like their grandfather. Then it was Moggi’s turn: where’s Zidane? And Giraudo: where’s Zidane? And then Bettega: discreetly, in a private corner of the locker room, because he was shy.
That was when I started to get a little lonely. Everyone was ignoring me; they all came to see Zidane. Sometimes even the fans ignored me. For instance, one morning at Turin’s Caselle Airport. We were returning from Athens, we’d just played an embarrassing Champions League match against Panathinaikos, and there, waiting for us as we got off the airplane, was a small mob of young men who weren’t especially interested in paying tribute to our athletic prowess. As Zidane went past, they shoved him. That marked them for—well, maybe not for death, but sudden and certain punishment. Montero witnessed the scene from a distance, removed his glasses and, with an elegant gesture that struck me as incongruous, slipped them into a case. It was handsomely done, but it boded badly for the young men. A few seconds later, he was running at top speed toward the little cluster of hoodlums, fists flying. Backing him up was Daniel Fonseca, another willing brawler. In my mind, I imagined a boxing announcer right behind them, hovering just outside the ring: “And that’s a right, a left hook, another left hook. Technical knockout, that’s a TKO. Zinédine is safe. I repeat, Zinédine is safe.”
Oh, the beating those poor guys took. They left a few on the ground. The problem was that a few hours later, we realized they were soccer hooligans, and vicious ones at that. In fact, they came to pay a call on us in the days that followed.
Ours was a team that was always ready for a battle. A single spark was enough to unleash an inferno. Paolo Montero, Daniel Fonseca, Edgar Davids: the Ivy League, present and correct. If they caught a whiff of a brawl, they would rush in without thinking twice. One time, at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome during halftime, the whole team was already down in the locker room. We heard angry voices outside, the sounds of an incipient brawl. Montero shouted, “Where’s Zidane?” (he really was sort of fixated …) and bolted out in person to see what was happening. He rushed into the fray, only to discover that it was just a crowd of Roma players, angrily quarreling amongst themselves. They looked up to see a furious Montero bearing down on them, ready to mow them to the ground, for absolutely no good reason. Paolo Montero adored Zizou, and, for that matter, I adored Paolo, who was pure of heart and stout of spirit. He could easily have been a convicted felon, but he had a code of honor all his own. And a mission, for which he was willing to fight: “Keep your hands off Zidane.”
Zizou’s son, Enzo, was just as amazing as his dad. He’d come to the stadium and imitate his father’s fakes. He never missed a move. He was a genius and the spitting image of his dad. I am increasingly certain that I coached a supernatural being: supernatural in every way, in his remarkable talent and in his great humility. Zidane is the soccer player who,