There is an ending to the story of Castel Rigone Calcio. And it is an unexpected one. Maybe. Well, perhaps it represents a final twist, then. The tale is told in The Blizzard, issue 14, Sept. 8, 2014, pages 122-128: “Rise and Fall of Castel Rigone: The entrepreneur, the village team and the experiment in humanistic capitalism”…

“This story does not end with dramatic victory from a penalty. It begins that way — in Florence, at a quarter to five on a Sunday afternoon, 5 May 2013. Banks of dark grey clouds jostle over the Apennines along the Arno River. Tourists shuffle along to glimpse Botticelli’s Allegory of Spring at the Uffizi Gallery. And at Stadio Turri, fourteen men crowd in along a torn white arc to watch Dario Pietro Tranchitella place a ball carefully on the ground…”

You’ll have to go to The Blizzard’s website to find out the rest.

I’m a…

After the rain, after the game

On April 14, we went to watch the last real chance for  Castel Rigone to climb their way into a play-out place for Serie C next season. It was another Don Bosco outing, but this time instead of a hundred people, there were about twenty. Several of Jakob’s teammates stood around the edges of the pitch as ball-boys. At first Jakob wanted to join them, but then, when the rain came, the heavy rain, he was glad he hadn’t.

The rain seemed like a sign that it wasn’t meant to be, a cruel natural inevitability that belied the team’s efforts on the field and the club’s effort in the stands. Once again, playing one of the top teams in the division, Castel Rigone played harder and generally better than Teramo. Once again, they lost anyway, haunted by a habitual slackness at the start of…

Scappini scoring his first goal, versus Tuttocuoio. From casterlrigonecalcio.it

I’ve been away for the last three matches, and having lacked the local newspaper, can’t give much detail about Castel Rigone’s recent struggles. With two losses and one draw, the team has slid down the table into the playout zone in 10th place.

Defensively, Castel Rigone has continued to have difficulty with crosses into the area (guilty of ball-watching and not minding the opposition’s runners). Offensively, they missed two penalties (a woeful team conversion rate of 42% for the season) which would have earned them three more points than they currently have. The team has given up an inordinate number of goals in the first 30 minutes of the game, as the Giornale dell’Umbria has recently described. Also, in each of the last two games, they’ve been reduced to 10 men after red cards, impeding their ability to mount a…

The sun was shining in Perugia on Saturday afternoon, but above Lake Trasimeno clouds and mist prevailed. In a parallel struggle at the edge of the sod and mud, visiting tifosi tried to lift the atmosphere, spreading red-and-yellow banners (and one flag), and calling out their songs to the tunes of ‘Aida’, ‘The Entertainer’, and even ‘God Save The Queen’. Poggibonsi’s English aspirations even extended to one of the supporters’ groups, ‘Old Lion‘. Their team had not lost in six games.

The home side were not sporting color; with the stewards in their usual light-grey Cucinelli slacks and charcoal pea coats, and the fans in dark winter gear, the mood was tense and uncertain. Castel Rigone had lost its last three matches.

The pitch had been vacuumed of water, but more was to come — not long after the opening whistle, the skies opened up. The morass…