Jeff Merron: This is a real departure from what you've been writing about for the past 15 years – murder and politics. You walked away from a $1 million advance for a book on the O.J. Simpson trial. What happened?

Joe McGinniss: I spent more than nine months at the O.J. trial, awarded a full-time front row seat for every session by Judge Ito, who, as it turned out, was a fan of some previous books of mine. In fact, I spent more time at that trial than anyone else involved.

But the verdict made a mockery of the whole thing. "Garbage in, garbage out." The case as presented by Marcia Clark and her assistants was so full of holes, so badly organized, and the defense attacks, especially those of Barry Scheck, upon the LAPD and the LA police laboratory procedures were so effective that at the end, I could not have voted to convict if I took the standard of "beyond a reasonable doubt" as seriously as the Constitution says we must.

It was a slam-dunk case for the prosecution, but they tried it blindfolded and backhanded and in the end only shattered the backboard. I believed deeply in my heart, and still do, that Simpson murdered both his ex-wife and Ronald Goldman, but it was a horrendous waste of time, except for some wonderful and lasting friends I made.

Merron: In the book, you date the beginning of your soccer fanaticism to the spring of 1994. In the fall of 1994, before the Simpson trial, you visited Italy and became even more obsessed. Did you follow the game during the trial?

McGinniss: Yes. Through the nine months I spent in L.A. my soccer obsession actually grew worse. Occasionally on weeknights, Mexican and Central American teams would play exhibition matches at the Coliseum and I would attend, often the only "gringo" there.

One night I persuaded the famous attorney Gerry Spence to come with me, but he got all pissed off when some much shorter fans sitting behind him asked him very politely to remove his Stetson hat, and he refused. Well, they never said another word, but they went to the concession stand and brought back a big tray of salsa, and with the utmost delicacy, so Gerry never felt a thing, smeared salsa and ketchup all over the hat. That was it, I'm afraid, for Gerry and soccer.

I lived for the weekends. On Saturday, by getting to the Cock'n'Bull Pub in Santa Monica before 7 a.m. it was possible to see a Premiership match from England live on closed circuit, big screen. Ah, what bliss!

Then on Sundays, it was strictly couch potato: I would get up at 5 a.m. to watch a match from Holland, then go back to bed for a couple of hours, then get up to watch the Mexican League, and at 2 p.m. came the highlight: a Serie A match from Italy on same-day tape delay, or, on special occasions, live.

One of the great moments came in late spring when the Padova team for which Alexi Lalas, with whom I'd made friends on my first extended visit to Italy in the fall of 1994, was playing against Genoa in a "playout" to see which team would be relegated to Serie B. I had the number of Alexi's cell phone, which his girlfriend had with her in the stands.

So while I was watching the match – at 7:30 a.m. in L.A. and 4:30 p.m. in Italy – I was talking to her live to get both the objective and wildly emotional versions simultaneously. It eventually went to penalty kicks, and the winner was scored by a Dutch midfielder named Michel Kreek, who played for Padova that year, and with whose girlfriend I'd also become well acquainted while over there in the fall.

She and Alexi's girlfriend were best of buddies themselves and sitting together, and as Michel lined up to take the kick, they switched cell phones so Michel's girlfriend could describe her feelings, as I was watching on TV. She spoke pretty good English, but when he made the kick to save Padova from relegation, there was only one language in the world, and that was ecstasy.

So I would say that it was the escape to soccer on weekends – and the occasional live matches during the week, one of which I watched in the company of Bora Milatunovic, manager of the highly successful U.S. squad in '94, who taught me more about the game in 90 minutes than I could have learned in nine months on my own – that enabled me to stick it out until the end. Without soccer I could never have lasted nine months at that trial.

But as soon as I came home and started trying to write about the whole mess, I found myself spending three times as much time trying to find soccer sites on the Internet, which even in the fall of '95 were far less plentiful and informative than they are now.

I also was trying to maneuver, eventually with success, to get hired by the Sunday Telegraph of London to cover the European national championships – the World Cup of Europe, essentially – which were to take place that year in England in June.

And that did it. Once I walked through the gates of Wembley for the first time, I knew there was no more O.J. in my life. You know, you get to a certain point in life, and you can sort of calculate what your financial obligations will be in terms of paying for the education of your children, et cetera, and then, if you're a person like me, you truly believe that money isn't everything, and to give some back (the $1 million for the O.J. book) to buy the freedom to do what I wanted to do was the easiest decision I'd ever made and never once did I regret it.

However, it was 'il calcio' – the soccer of Italy – that was my strongest passion, for reasons that are explained in the book, and when I stumbled across this story of Castel di Sangro, the tiny mountain village from one of the most remote sections of the country, with only 5,000 inhabitants and a village team that had gone from amateur status to Serie B, the second highest professional league in country – featuring teams from huge cities like Torino, Genoa, and Verona – in virtually the blink of an eye, I knew this was what I had to write next.

God knows, I didn't know how, not speaking a word of Italian and not having any idea of even how to get to Castel di Sangro and not having any idea what sort of reception I'd find if and when I did. But, hell, I was 53 years old, just ripe enough for one more grand adventure.

Page Two
Joe critiques American soccer,
and plunges headfirst into Italy