Once Upon a Time in Salento: a generation at Unione Sportiva Lecce

[Salentina89]

Prologue: Le Radici Ca Tieni

Lecce. 2013.

The marble-white Baroque jewel of a city on the southernmost tip of the heel of Italy's boot. The Salento peninsula, the ancient land where Dionysus himself once delighted in dark, bittersweet wine and the gnarled olive trees have quietly watched civilizations rise and fall. Where the bite of a tarantula can send a maiden into a frenzied, hypnotic dance, where the local dialect has more in common with classical Latin and Greek than with modern Italian, and where, just outside the city limits at a place called the Via Del Mare - the Way of the Sea - a fallen giant sleeps.

The Via Del Mare is a holy place - more than that, it's a football stadium. True believers and lovers in red and yellow stripes wave their flags and banners and sing their songs full voice every weekend, but the number of these true believers and lovers is getting smaller and smaller...because the sad truth is US Lecce, the pride of Salento, has been relegated to the third division of Italian football, the regional Lega Pro. Not everyone was a true believer, it turns out, only showing up when Lecce were still fighting alongside the best of the best in Serie A. It's one thing to go to the stadium when Juventus comes to town, but when the big game is a clash against Benevento or Catanzaro or (*shudder*) Cittadella? I'll stay home....I'll watch on TV....I'll go out to dinner and follow the score on my phone, no big deal.

This cannot stand.

My name (in FM, anyways) is Mara Giovannini. I was born (in FM, anyways) in Lecce. And I am (in FM, anyways) the only woman in all of Italy to have ever completed the Continental Pro coaching badges, and I am going to save US Lecce, I will restore pride to the Salento, and I will fill the Via Del Mare with true believers and lovers once again.

I arrive at the training ground for my first day listening to the unofficial anthem of the Salento, by Sud Sound System:

"Se nu te scierri mai delle radici ca tieni

Rispetti puru quiddre te li paisi lontani,

Se nu te scierri mai de du ete ca ieni

Dai chiu valore alla cultura ca tieni."

"Don't forget your roots, as you respect other cultures, honor your own as well." In FM at least, I am Leccese. This is my land and my team and my pride at stake. I walk into the training ground and......

....this is going to be harder than I thought.

[mark wilson27]

Welcome to FMS Salentina. Always liked the Italian leagues to play on FM. Looking forward to more and good luck

[Salentina89]

Thanks! I've very belatedly discovered this forum so I've got ten seasons of drama to remember and post - I'll stick to the highlights but I'm so emotionally attached to this damn team I wanted to share them with the world.

[Salentina89]

The story, for all intents and purposes, begins with Lorenzo Mazzella.

This entire save was supposed to be about him, I created him myself in the editor. I gave him world-class potential but tragic flaws - he was hotheaded, undisciplined, controversial.

He wasn’t a local kid, he was born in a rough suburb of Napoli, playing football was all he could do to keep out of trouble. The first thing he did well, the second he didn’t, so for one reason or another he had to get out of town in a hurry by the time he was 15. Lecce was far enough away, and he didn’t have much family to be leaving behind. So he landed in our Primavera the same year I got there, he was all sharp elbows and skinny fast legs and angry dark eyes glaring at everyone behind his messy mop of black hair. And I swear to you, what a talent.

As soon as the papers found him they declared that he would be the next Gianluca Vialli, seeing in his gawky adolescent frame the promise of a future tank of a man, and in his resentful, suspicious gaze the flicker of a world-beating determination. An injury crisis towards the end of my first season forced my hand and I brought him, barely sixteen, into my starting lineup.

It was something unreal, what I saw that day. Skinny, slouching, sulking Lorenzetto Mazzella laced up his boots, stepped on the pitch - and became a man. Suddenly he stood tall, commanded his area of the pitch with absolute assurance, ran circles around every opponent. He won us three points that day, and with that strike ensured that we would be promoted to Serie B.

By the beginning of the next season, with Giacomo Beretta having been recalled to Milan as part of the hard bargain I had to strike to keep Gianmarco Zigoni, Luigi Falcone and Filippo Falco teaming up to falcon-punch me with a double betrayal that is a story for another day, and my idiot sporting director insisting on selling Andrea Capristo, there was nothing to do but give my little Neapolitan bomber a starting spot. And the look on his face started to turn from a teenage sulk to a determined, cocky grin.

He was a hell-raiser, of course, always egging Gianmarco on to stay out late and shamelessly talking back to senior members of the squad. He was the Chosen One, and he knew it. Oh, how he knew it. Even then, I suppose, looking back, I had my doubts about my choice.

[Salentina89]

Chapter 2: Tale Padre, Tale Figlio (Like Father, Like Son)

“Zigoni….Zigoni….hang on, how do I know that name?” I peered curiously at my quiet young striker, Gianmarco. “Do you have an older brother who also plays? I’ve heard the name.”

Gianmarco blushed slightly. “My father played for Juventus and Verona. In the seventies. He’s a bit…older…”

I snapped my fingers. “THAT Zigoni!” And then I stared at Gianmarco in bewilderment.

Gianfranco Zigoni, the father, had been a notorious character, a brilliant striker and excellent hell-raiser. He always carried a pistol, quoted Che Guevara and Jesus Christ in equal measure, claimed to be better than Pele, and once showed up to a match in a giant fur coat to protest his exclusion from the match squad.

And his son - really? - who stood before me, rather, was quiet and modest, an introverted and hardworking young man, one of the first to arrive at training and usually the last to leave. He seemed awkward, uncertain of himself and perhaps a bit wary of me. I could hardly blame him - football was still such a man’s world, a woman manager was bewildering to most of the squad. But he was diligent to the point of being rigid, professional to the point of being antisocial. I sometimes wondered if the rest of the squad even knew his name.

Then Lorenzetto, somehow, latched onto him as a big brother figure, but rather than learning from Gianmarco’s calm levelheadedness, he just tried to drag the serious-natured boy along on all his scrapes and escapades. The funny thing, the part I’d never admit to either of them in a million years? It helped. The Zigoni blood needed a bit of mischief added in order to run freely in Gianni’s veins. He started to loosen up, began cracking jokes with his teammates and relaxing into the group mentality. And it helped his game - once he unblocked himself in the locker room, he unblocked himself on the pitch. Our promotion from Lega Pro to Serie B that first season was virtually a formality by New Year’s, and it was Gianni Zigo that topped the scoring charts.

One night in late January, a particularly foggy and miserable spell of weather, after a hard-fought victory over Catanzaro, Gianni beckoned me over to his locker with a mischievous gleam in his eye. Carefully, making sure to not be too noticed by the rest of the boys, he unzipped a small compartment on the side of his kit bag and let me peer inside. Whereupon i jumped back in astonishment - gentle, mild-mannered Gianni Zigoni was his father’s son after all, and had a small vintage pistol hidden away in his bag.

“It’s my dad’s, he gave it to me for good luck when Milan signed me to the Primavera,” he whispered gleefully. “It’s not loaded, don’t worry,” he assured me quickly. “And I’ve never fired it in my life. When I achieve something great, though, I’m going to get some blanks and fire off a few rounds….just for the hell of it.” He grinned. “I was thinking I’d let you fire a few shots too, once we get promoted again, to Serie A.”

I regarded him carefully, trying to hide the burst of pride I felt. “So…you’re sticking with us for the long haul then? I thought Milan wanted you back.”

Gianni shook his head. “They do. I don’t want them. I’m nobody there. Here….I could be somebody, you know? We’re all nobodies about to be somebody. My dad left Juve because they wanted him to be just like everyone else. He told me to never stay at a team where I’m just a goal machine, but to go where I can be…Zigoni. Whoever Zigoni is now.”

Gianni blushed, embarrassed at his outpouring of inner thoughts. “All I mean is…if it’s possible to stay…I mean, I’m sure the club could use the money from my transfer…”

I cut him off. “Not my club. If Milan gave me a million euros on a silver platter for you, I’d send it back. What you just told me - well, as far as I’m concerned, you can stay for life as long as it’s what your conviction tells you to do.”

Gianni’s face was a portrait of relief. “But for heaven’s sake, put that pistol away before you make a terrible influence on Lorenzetto,” I admonished him. He smirked and closed up his bag, and we headed out to help dig the team bus out of the muddy rut it had gotten stuck in, down here in the dilapidated depths of Lega Pro.

*Gratuitous Disclaimer: Gianmarco Zigoni, unlike the rest of the main characters who are all regens, exists in real life as a real person and I feel profoundly strange writing fiction about him. He figures prominently in the story and I hereby apologize to real Gianmarco, wherever you are out there, for being weird. xD

[tenthreeleader]

Thanks! I've very belatedly discovered this forum so I've got ten seasons of drama to remember and post - I'll stick to the highlights but I'm so emotionally attached to this damn team I wanted to share them with the world.

That's what FMS is for. Welcome!