The Italian Job by Gianluca Vialli - excerpt (Chapter One)

Chapter One

The First Few Kicks

It all begins with a ball and a child. The ball is usually some kind of plastic/rubber compound (leather is for the big kids) and, these days, it originates somewhere with cheap labour. The child, of course, is flesh and blood, yet he or she is drawn to this artificial object, mesmerized by its shape and its unfamiliar smell. It looks solid and inert but as soon as it's nudged, a wonderful thing happens - it moves!

Anyone who has seen a child approach his or her first football may relate to the wonder they experience as the little leg stretches out to kick, and, magically, the ball rolls away.

It may sound clichéd, but at that age, that moment of first contact between child and football, everyone is the same. The Italian child is like the English child, and they are no different from a Venezuelan or an Inuit. What is striking, though, is how quickly the footballing paths diverge when the outside world crashes in. Even in the earliest kickabouts with parents, siblings or friends, footballing differences begin to emerge, and grow with the child, particularly in those who, like me, have the good fortune to turn their relationship with the ball into a life-long profession. Climate, culture, social class, economic conditions, all play their part. They divide the footballing world - but that is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it enriches us. Without it, there would be no 'Italian football', 'English football' or 'Brazilian football'.

We all have a sense of what those terms mean. We know that football is different in different countries. In fact, we have a mass of stereotypes: German football is disciplined; Italian football is defensive; English football is direct; Brazilian football is full of flair. I wasn't satisfied with these descriptions. To me, they seemed like convenient short-cuts to explain a far more complex reality, one which is rapidly changing.

I wanted to dig deeper. I wanted to understand, as best I could, the way things really were and how they were evolving. I wanted to figure out how, when and why those differences developed. Understand where we are, where we came from and where we're going. And, perhaps, destroy a few myths, unravel a few mysteries and offer one or two suggestions along the way.

We spend a lot of time talking about football - all of us, whether we're players, coaches, the media or fans.We talk about it pretty much incessantly.We've got twenty-four-hour television sports channels, radio stations, daily sports newspapers in Italy, lengthy sports sections in the English papers and, of course, the constant chatter in bars and pubs from Rome to Rotherham. It struck me that much of this discourse is both immediate and specific.We are drawn to it because it's so vast and colourful.We think about who won or lost and why, which player or team is better, whether the foul was inside or outside the box, how it made us feel. And that's all wonderful.

But we don't generally think about what lies beneath: why we see and experience football as we do. Why do some places produce certain types of player? Why do some supporters prefer a certain kind of football? Why do some countries prefer certain tactical schemes?

If we all start in the same place, why do we end up all over the footballing spectrum?

Of course, I am only one man and I don't have all the time and resources in the world, so I have focused here on the two footballing schools I know best: Italy, the country of my birth, where I lived and played until I was thirty-two, and England, my home for the last decade, where I have played, managed, married and started a family.

The thing about football is that it's a living thing. It moves and changes, slowly but inexorably - and, over time, radically. Much of the recent change has gone hand in hand with the globalization that has touched most aspects of modern life. Mass culture is eroding national and geographic identities. Those children, who were all the same when faced with a football at the age of three, are, in many ways, remaining the same as they grow older.

Imagine going to six cities in five different continents - Bari (Italy), Bangkok (Thailand), Bloemfontein (South Africa), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Boston (United States) and Burnley (England): take one ten-year-old boy from each place and put them in the same room. Now imagine that language was not an issue (pretend there's a universal-translator machine like there is in Star Trek - work with me here!). What would the kids talk about? What would they have in common?

Chances are, they'd have plenty to talk about. Most probably, they play the same games on the PlayStation, watch the same films on television and listen to the same music on the radio or their MP3 players. They've probably been driven around in the same cars and they would all be familiar with McDonald's (though the Italian boy's mamma might not have allowed him to eat there . . .). And they would all know who David Beckham is.

I think back to when I was ten. What could I have discussed with my foreign peers? Certainly a hell of a lot less than today's ten-year-olds. Maybe a bit about films or music, football, if it was a World Cup year. But that was it. Our common culture was far smaller than it is today. The world is shrinking - as we are often reminded.

Still, even when I was a child, a common thread linked me with my peers: we played our first football matches with friends, in streets, courtyards or parks, not in any organized setting. It's another stereotype, which goes right back to Pelé and his ball of rags in the favelas of Bauru, in the state of Săo Paulo, but it certainly holds true. Every professional today has a story about their first epic football battles. In fact, everyone who has played the game at any level, whether competitive or not, will probably find them familiar.

'We lived in tenements and there was what we called a back court where women put their washing,' says Sir Alex Ferguson. 'At each end you had two poles, which served as goals.Along the side, for maybe twenty odd yards, we had these dykes, which served as cellars for the shops nearby, and at the back there was a wall, so it was fully enclosed.'

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