American Football (Lo Sport)

If you’re an avid reader of Florentine Braheem, you likely remember the story regarding the American Football player who I met one morning at the palestra and later witnessed sitting on the curb smoking a cigarette right after his workout! His name is Alessandro and he is a “Prince” of a guy. Alessandro is the center and captain of Giulfi (Florence’s team in the Italian football league). For weeks Alessandro had been inviting me to go to one of his practices, but the cold weather and fact that they start at 9:00 on weeknights, just didn’t make the invite all that appealing. The team is comprised of a bunch of Italian guys in their 20’s and 30’s who for reasons that I have not quite figured out, want to play American Football, even though they don’t get paid for their time. In fact, it costs them a decent chunk of change as they need to buy all of their own equipment and often pay for their own travel expenses for road games!

March 15th was opening day and as it turned out the weather was quite nice with only a few clouds in the sky, so I decided to jump on the motorino and ride across the city to the stadium and check things out. I arrived mid way through the 1st quarter at the medium sized stadium that holds about 20,000 people and was astonished by both the fact that I didn’t need to pay to enter the stadium, but also that I was able to sit down in the second row on the 40 yard line! My estimate is that there were about 200 people in attendance, not including the seven or eight dogs who were viewing the action with their owners! When was the last time you went to a sporting event and people brought their pets? As you might expect by now, at least half of the die hard fans were keeping with the Italian sport fan tradition of smoking cigarettes during the action!

The first half was riddled with turnovers (I counted four fumbles alone in from the time I arrived and half time. Its been a while since I have been to a high school football game in the United States, but I’m pretty damn sure that there are some teams in Texas that could have had their way with both these teams! In any case, it was really fun to watch these dedicated and passionate men lay it out on the field for the love of the game.

As the second quarter winded down, I noticed a lady leaning against the fence at mid field with a camera around her neck. This gave me an idea! In this land of rules that were made to be broken, why not try to get onto the field for some good camera shots? I decided to go stand next to her on the fence and follow her lead. This prompted her to rapid fire questions at me in Italian that I couldn’t follow. As I tried to respond, she recognized that I spoke English and asked me if I would like to speak in my language. The question that she wanted to have answered was whether or not it was OK for her to go onto the field and take photos! I told her that we would soon find out and opened the gate as the two of us walked right up along the sideline and proceeded to watch the second half up close and personal. She turned out to be a very nice lady from Naples who was living for a few months in Florence on work.

At half time as the teams trotted to the locker room she invited me to come sit with her and her two friends in the stands (One who happened to be an Italian porn star!) As the second half started, it became apparent to me that a significant number of the spectators (Including my three new friends) understood little nothing of what they were watching! They had managed to show enthusiasm in their cheers even though they we clueless of not only the rules of American Football, but also the goals of the game! The rest of the afternoon was spent with me “Holding Court” in the stands, explaining to a group of 10 Italians why there were orange sticks on the sidelines, why the referee just moved his hands and arms in a circular motion and what the yellow flag was that they kept throwing on the field. What a blast it was to be teaching the rules of American Football to Italian people, I felt like an ambassador for the NFL in Europe. In the end, Florence won 33-26 and as I rode the motorino back home through the city streets of Florence, I thought to myself “Now this was one hell of a great day!”