McGinniss: Nothing about my experience in Castel di Sangro troubled me as a journalist because I did not go there as a journalist, I did not act as a journalist while I was there, and I have not written a journalistic book.

My intention, as it has been in every book I've written, was to tell a story as well as I could. In each case my goal was to give the reader, insofar as was possible, the experience of actually being there – of actually having an experience, not just reading about an experience that I had.

I did not become a part of the team so much as the team became a part of me. Yes, they accepted me into their family – and it was more a family than simply a group of professionals in Castel di Sangro. This degree of closeness was uncommon even in Italy and almost unheard of in England, where players generally tend to go their separate ways after training and matches.

But I also came to consider them members of my family. And while I've been spared the unsurpassable agony and torment of the death of a child, when those two boys got killed in that accident, the sorrow I felt was as deep as any I've ever felt in my life. Yet I'd known them for less than three months, they were half my age, and I was only beginning the process of really being able to talk to them. But that's simply how intense the experience was.

There is a bond formed, however, that both precedes and goes beyond verbal expression, and for whatever reason, when that bond was formed among the Castel di Sangro players, it included me. In fact, I was even inducted in the Associazione Calciatori Italiani, the Italian players' union. Only as an honorary member of course, but there was a presentation of a certificate and a pin and a cap, all made quite seriously by the team captain, who had the power to induct, at his discretion one, but no more than one non-team member into the Union each year. Of course, he didn't have to induct any.

You know, that simple act, because of its utter sincerity, brought more joy to me than I've ever received from seeing a book of mine on a best seller list.

Merron: You had an interesting relationship with Castel di Sangro's coach, Osvaldo Jaconi. It was volatile, and often hostile. You become so involved that you frequently, and insistently, tell the coach both how he should play, tactically, and who should play. Did you ever think, "I'm stepping over a line here"?

But I think Jaconi realized it was going to be a long and hard season and if I could amuse him with occasional bursts of lunacy, that was all to the good.

He'd been asked questions by journalists for twenty years and had learned how to fend them off. But he hadn't flat out been challenged face to face.

And I should make clear I did this only when we were alone, never publicly in front of the squad. I would not have dreamed of insulting him in that fashion. And remember, too, by that time we were literally neighbors, living in adjacent apartments at one end of a long hall in an otherwise sparsely occupied building, owned of course, by the Man of the Mountain, the owner of the team.

So it was not as blatantly offensive to him as it may have seemed in the book, although absolutely there were times I'd push it too far or he'd be in the wrong mood and he'd grab a pencil and angrily draw lines and X's all through my carefully calibrated formation and tactical plan. But the irritation never lasted until the next meal. And I did learn things.

I also learned a lot about tactics and lineups from the players who, once they felt they could truly trust me, and once they were confident I was understanding what they were saying, would frequently seek me out to bitch about Jaconi's lineup selections and tactics. And these were not only from the substitutes, from whom you'd expect it, but from many of the regulars.

In fact, for all the familial atmosphere, which was utterly genuine, the squad was split into two camps: those who had come up through the ranks with Jaconi and who had developed absolute loyalty to him, and those who had joined more recently and who, almost to a man, considered him a narrow-minded and obtuse buffoon.

Personally, I kept going back and forth between the two points of view as the season progressed, but as a man and as a neighbor I never had anything but the greatest of affection for him and gratitude to him for letting me participate so fully in the life of the team, for really, just one word from him that I was not welcome down on the training field or in the locker room or on the team bus and I might as well have gone home. But it never even came close to that.

I'll just add this: one day he was driving me to his home in a city about two and a half hours from Castel di Sangro so I could meet his wife and daughters for the first time. His daughter was teaching him English on his off days so he could better communicate with me which was, when you think of it, an extraordinarily decent and generous thing to do.

I remember him saying to me, mostly in Italian, but with a little English mixed in, "I'm glad you're always butting in with your own ideas, because I listen in the hope that just maybe I might learn something new." "And have you?" I asked eagerly. He said, "No, not even one time. But you keep trying because every time I see more clearly that I is right. So your wrongheaded and stupid advice is good for my confidence."

McGinniss: That’s one of the more memorable situations. Jaconi suddenly tossed me the whistle and said, "You be aribtro. I watch." And all at once I found myself the referee.

It may have been only a five-on-five scrimmage, but it was played – as Castel di Sangro always played – with the intensity of a World Cup final. And no matter how friendly we might have been five minutes earlier, once I blew the whistle, I was the enemy to every player involved.

And I made some mistakes and I got in some arguments and I threatened to send off a player for protesting too much, and in the end the mini-match was settled by a very controversial decision of mine, allowing a goal to stand, where the scorer had quite possibly committed a foul in going for the ball near the goal. At dinner that night the guys on the losing side would not speak to me.

Jaconi got a great laugh out of this, of course, but he'd also had a more serious, and generous, purpose in mind. To let me see the game from an entirely different point of view. Which, believe me, it was.

That was in early December, just at the point when Jaconi thought I'd be able to handle it without his having to bail me out. And I did, just barely. And I might have learned more about the true nature of the game that afternoon than during all the rest of the season. And Jaconi had done it for just that reason: to give me that rarest of perspectives.

Next page
The players put Joe on the spot