I Think Therefore I Play (7 page)

“You all need the same anger as me. Full stop.” His message was short and to the point, a bit like a telegram – certainly the most convincing one that I’ve ever received. He’s not a guru, Conte, nor is he a magician, for all he’s been known to pull some crazy speeches out of the hat. You either do what he says or you don’t play. He runs on Conte-time and so do we.

He obsesses over every last detail, exploiting it to his advantage. When he’s looking at tactics, he’ll have us watching videos for hours, explaining over and over again where and why we got a move wrong. He’s plainly allergic to error (perhaps to horror as well) and I for one pray every day that a cure is never found.

Out on the training pitches at Vinovo, quite often we’ll end up winning, for the simple reason that we’re not playing against anyone. From Monday to Friday, the opposition don’t exist. He’ll have us playing games of 11 versus none, making us repeat the same moves for three-quarters of an hour, until he sees they’re working and that we’re starting to feel sick.

And that’s why we still win when it’s 11 against 11. If Arrigo Sacchi was a genius, then what does that make Conte? I was expecting him to be good, but not
this
good. I thought he’d be a tough, committed, charismatic kind of coach, but plenty of other managers could learn a lot from him in terms of his technical and tactical awareness.

If I could go back in time, I’d change only one thing: I wouldn’t pick the spot next to Buffon in our dressing room. It’s the one right in front of the door, and the most dangerous spot in the whole of Turin, especially at half-time. Even when we’re winning, Conte comes in and hurls against the wall (and thus my little corner) anything he can lay his hands on, almost always full bottles of water. Fizzy water. Very fizzy water.

It’s really quite a rage. He’s never happy – there’s always some small detail that’s not quite right in his mind. He can see in advance what might happen in the 45 minutes still to come. This one time, for instance, we were losing to Milan and he just couldn’t make sense of it. “Losing to them! Them! I can’t understand why we’re not beating them! They’re not even playing well!”

It’s a different story at the end of a match: he tends to disappear completely. At a push, he’ll come in for a quick word, but only if we’ve won. He’s at his worst at night when he’s alone with his thoughts. He necks these horrible concoctions to help him sleep, almost like he’s actually just played the game. He was the exact same when he did play. He struggles to sleep and goes over and over everything, then hits the rewind button in his head and does it all again.

It’s an inner torment without a start or end point, a song on some kind of loop where you can’t tell what’s the first verse and what’s the last, you can only make out the chorus. He’s completely immersed in his job, which is also his great pleasure. I’ve never quite understood whether it’s the coach or the fan who takes up position in the dugout, but either way it’s someone who makes a difference.

He still managed to have that effect even during the long ban linked to the strange
Calcioscommesse
affair, dating back to his time at Siena.
²⁰
You could tell he really felt it on a Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday – those are the most important days for the team and he wasn’t allowed to come near us. It drove him absolutely crazy that he couldn’t pop his head into the dressing room (let’s just say he ended up there a few times by mistake).

His absence was obvious at half-time, but his deputies, Angelo Alessio and Massimo Carrerra, simply did what he’d told them to. They didn’t have much freedom in the post-match interviews either: Conte supplied the ideas and words, and they put their faces to them.

I never once saw him cry or get upset during that whole period. Just before the sentence was delivered, we were out at a training camp in China and the tension was writ large on his face. He was spending whole days on the phone to his lawyers. He never went into specifics with us players; he was good at keeping us separate from his problems and making out that nothing had changed.

Only on one occasion, just before the bomb went off, did he ask the leaders for help. I was there, along with Buffon, Giorgio Chiellini and Claudio Marchisio. “Lads, this is a difficult time. You need to give me a hand, even more so than normal. Give your all in training and in the games and when I’m not there, you be the ones who keep the rest of the boys on their toes. Don’t slacken off. Don’t let everything we’ve built go to hell in a handcart.”

We felt really sorry for him and his assistant Cristian Stellini, who ended up leaving the club. He’d been a big part of the group and spent a lot of time with us players. He looked after the defensive side of our game and when he left, we really felt his absence. One night he came into my hotel room after a friendly we’d played down in Salerno. It was 3am. “Andrea, I can’t stay here any more,” he said. “I’m leaving, because I love Juventus and I want to calm the waters.”

One thing I know for sure. The real problem lies in official, authorised betting. Ever since that’s been legalised, the whole thing has got worse. It’s provided a really dangerous springboard for those prone to taking things too far and for those who want to involve themselves in dodgy, shady affairs.

For me, the authorities should take a drastic decision with regards to Serie B and Serie C: make it impossible to bet on those leagues. Particularly in Serie C (or rather, Lega Pro, because that’s what it’s called even if nobody remembers). There are players who haven’t been paid in weeks. So they make an agreement amongst themselves to manipulate the result, place a bet at the bookies and manage to get by until the end of the month. Then until the end of the year. Then until who knows when. And it’s not much better in Serie B.

I’m sure people will object and say that if official betting didn’t exist, the schemes run by the Mafia, Camorra and other similar nasty pieces of work would simply take their place. That’s certainly a possibility, but let’s sort out one problem and then throw ourselves into the next. Not taking that first step makes the second one impossible.

Personally, I think that any player caught with their hand in the till should be struck off there and then. No second chances for those who steal and play hide and seek all at the same time. I just don’t know what goes on in some people’s heads, including so-called champions. For me, it’s an illness to always want more money when you’ve already got infinite riches.

Nobody has ever tried to involve me in anything, and in that respect it was a blessing to spend so many years at Milan. Losing and drawing simply don’t enter the equation there. You go out with a single thought in your head: winning. If anyone had ever tried to get me involved in shit like that, I would have kicked them into the middle of next week. I’m not normally a violent man, but don’t push me.

And, yes, we can all appear blind and deaf. In Serie B all sorts of crazy stuff goes on, especially towards the end of the season. There are some really surreal games and nobody ever says a word. No player has ever stuck their head above the parapet. There are whispers that even in Serie A, certain teams will allow themselves to be led by the hand, so to speak. The really difficult step for a player to take is reporting a fellow pro who tries to involve him in a fix. What do you do? Especially if he’s a team-mate or, worse still, a friend. You tell him ‘no’ and have a go at him. If it were me, I’d probably give him a good slap. But how on earth do you then go and tell the authorities that he was about to commit the mother of all mistakes? At that point, they’re going to train the spotlight on you, too, even though you’ve nothing to do with it. You could end up paying the price for an attempted fraud despite having absolutely no guilt.

That’s why I believe the principle of collective responsibility is wrong in this sort of case. You mess up, you involve me, I tell you ‘no’, I insult you, I don’t report you, and now they can come after me as well. It just doesn’t stack up.

In addition to getting rid of betting, there should be incentives for winning. I’ll give you an example of how it might work. Team B are second in the league and up against Team C, who don’t have anything much to play for. If Team B lose, Team A (currently top of the table) go on to win the league. So Team A approach Team C and say: “Here’s some money. It’s yours if you beat Team B.”

With positive incentives like that, every team would fight right until the finish without any sort of subterfuge. It already happens abroad, but I fear that in Italy we’ll never arrive at a similar solution because there are too many interests at stake. And that’s something I’m willing to bet on.

 

19.
Juventus won the 2011–2012 Serie A title by four points, going the entire league season unbeaten

20.
Calcioscommesse
was a match fixing/betting scandal that saw Antonio Conte banned for 10 months, reduced to four on appeal

Chapter 9

I wouldn’t bet a single cent on me becoming a manager, though. It’s not a job I’m attracted to. There are too many worries and the lifestyle is far too close to that of a player. I’ve done my bit and, in the future, I’d like to get back even a semblance of a private life. There’s only one Antonio Conte and that’s fine by me, even if Marcello Lippi wasn’t too dissimilar when he got pissed off.

It was a real team effort that made us world champions in Germany but, at one point, Lippi had this to say about the group: “You’re all shits; you disgust me.” Before our quarter-final against Australia, a game we won thanks to a (non-existent) Francesco Totti penalty, he called us into a meeting room at the team hotel and tore us all to shreds.

“You talk to the journalists too much. You’re spies who can’t keep a single secret – those guys always know the team in real time. What’s that all about? I can’t even trust you.” He wouldn’t let us say a word; it was an absolute monologue. He just couldn’t keep a lid on it. His face was contorted with rage, and the veins in his neck were about to explode. His brakes had evidently been tampered with.

“Go fuck yourselves: I don’t want anything more to do with you. Bunch of bastards. Bastards and spies.” The whole thing lasted five minutes, and when Lippi had finished, a good few of us sought Pippo Inzaghi’s reaction out of the corner of our eye.

Lippi was the catalyst for a very special experience and emotion that nobody can ever take away from us. But he’s also at the heart of a thought that troubles me from time to time. Whenever I meet him, I remember that had he stayed on as Inter coach, I’d probably have become a standard bearer at the club. A less moustachioed Beppe Bergomi.
²¹
An Esteban Cambiasso
²²
with more hair.

My career would certainly have gone in a very definite direction. Had Lippi been in charge, I’d have stayed at Inter for life.
²³
After all, they were my team as a kid, when I was an
ultra
with a dummy. My absolute idol was Lothar Mätthaus. He was the No.10 who scored the goals and inspired the rest – for me, there was nobody better. The time I met him on holiday in Viareggio and got his autograph was for a long while the best and most important day of my life.

After Mätthaus came Roberto Baggio. Just as well I had a big bedroom, so that both their posters would fit on the wall and I didn’t have to pick which god to pull down from Mount Olympus.

I was still an Inter fan when I was playing for Brescia, but then I spent some time at the club and my outlook changed somewhat. At the end of season 1997/98 I was in camp with the Italy under-21s when my agent rang. “Andrea, you’re moving. We’ve done a deal with Parma. All you need to do is sign the contract.”

I really let myself get carried away with the happiness of the moment, condensing my infinite enthusiasm into a single word: “Okay.”

The following morning, I got home and it was suddenly all change once more. My mobile went again – more insistently than usual. “Hi Andrea, it’s Tullio. Look, last night the Inter president Moratti phoned Luigi Corioni at Brescia to talk about you. They agreed everything between them in less than 10 minutes. You’re off to play for the team you love. You’re an Inter player – you’ve done it! Now go and get ready; we need to take you to Appiano Gentile for your medical.” There followed another explosion of joy, even more powerful than the first one: “Okay, no worries.”

I might not have looked it, but I was the happiest man alive, proud of having thrown myself into the world shown in those posters. I wanted to stick myself up on that wall. I was going to be a team-mate of Ronaldo, Baggio, Djorkaeff – me, the guy who now and again still went to games with a black-and-blue scarf round his neck and who, at 16 years of age, had been invited to play a trial match in Eindhoven by the top men at the club, people like Sandro Mazzola.
²⁴

I played a lot in my first season at Inter. Pre-season went really well, and Gigi Simoni gave me plenty of game time, both as a starter and from the bench. Mircea Lucescu tended to favour the older guys, Luciano Castellini thought I was okay, while Roy Hodgson mispronounced my name. He called me
Pirla
(dickhead), perhaps understanding my true nature more than the other managers.

Moratti went through four of them that season.
²⁵
It was during this time I started to suffer from migraines and sudden memory loss. I’d wake up in the morning and not remember who my coach was. I’d still be smiling, in blissful ignorance. Confused, but grinning.

The following year, they brought in Lippi. I did the full pre-season under him, but he then pulled me aside to give me a heartfelt message. “Andrea, for your own good, you need to go and play somewhere else, at least for a season. Get some experience under your belt. It’ll stand you in good stead, you’ll see.”

I ended up at Reggina, and I did indeed learn a lot. In particular, how to take on more responsibility, and how to get stuck in and fight in the mud.