We are publishing an excerpt from “All the exemptions of the president”, the article on Maurizio Zamparini which will be featured in the first issue of our magazine.
From 1987 to 2018: a story that winds through 31 very long years, starting from Marco Polo and ending in Punta Raisi. How many things can change in thirty one years? Many, but also few: posterity the arduous sentence; on the other hand, who decides what is a lot and what is a little? But let’s try to get an idea: during this time span they have alternated: six presidents of the United States; three pontiffs; one monarch of England. However, let’s leave out the main systems and humbly return to our little one, or the world of football: seven teams managed to take turns on the throne of champion of Italy (Naples, Milan, Inter, Sampdoria, Juventus, Lazio, Rome); only five were those capable of boasting the title of world champion (Germany, Brazil, France, Italy, Spain); just as many were the coaches who sat on the prestigious Manchester United bench (Alex Ferguson, David Moyes, Ryan Giggs, Louis Van Gaal, Jose Mourinho).
“While Rome is consulted, Saguntum is attacked” the good ones would say: while in the world, football and otherwise, something timidly changed to then go around and remain unchanged and perpetually the same as itself, first in Venice and then in Palermo a strange carnage was consumed made up of benches blown up and coaches torpedoed who saw their sacks delivered, only to then be called back to base, but with a constantly vigilant eye, and sometimes without even taking the trouble to unpack, because as the times go by…
However, there is one thing that has remained unchanged in all this time, in addition to Queen Elizabeth II: the architect of this incredible machine devours coaches, the not so hidden mind behind this mechanism, the man who made the figure almost as precarious as that of a novice intern. The name is known to all: Maurizio Zamparini from Bagnaria Arsa, province of Udine.
Zamparini is a worthy representative of a traditional figure of Italian football from the past decades, almost a mask born of the commedia dell’arte, immutable and always the same, from show to show, from league to league. Ideological son of the Anconetani, the Rozzi and the Sibilia, he went beyond the figure of the entrepreneur who delights in football, of the father-owner of provincial teams, bringing him to a new dimension that has remained, in some respects, unique: none of his “putative children”, the various Spinelli, Preziosi or Cellino who have ventured into the world of football over the years, have known how to do anything but remain in his wake, in the path traced, resulting in some aspects only faded copies.
The story begins, as mentioned, in 1987: Zamparini enters the world of football by taking over the shares of a Venice that is sailing in bad waters. He does it, of course, making himself talked about: at the same time, in fact, he also buys the other team from the capital, Mestre, merging the two clubs into a single sporting entity, not without controversy on the part of both fans. At the technical guide of the creature he places an old glory of lagoon football like Ferruccio Mazzola, son and brother in art of the better known Valentino and Sandro. Which he did very well, leading the newborn team, enrolled in Serie C2, to an immediate promotion. «We went up but the year of the contract also ended (by Mazzola, ed.) and let him go” the president would comment years later «unfortunately taking another coach, Aldo Cerantola, who lasted four games with as many defeats».
So the legend begins: Cerantola was followed by Giovan Battista Fabbri, Antonio Pasinato, Giuseppe Sabadini, Alberto Zaccheroni, Rino Marchesi, Pietro Maroso, Giovanni Bui, Gian Piero Ventura, Luigi Maifredi, Gabriele Geretto, Giuseppe Marchioro, Gianfranco Bellotto, Walter De Vecchi, Franco Fontana, Walter Novellino , Luciano Spalletti, Giuseppe Materazzi, Francesco Oddo, Cesare Prandelli, Alfredo Magni, Sergio Buso; and then in Palermo Ezio Glerean, Daniele Arrigoni, Nedo Sonetti, Silvio Baldini, Francesco Guidolin, Gigi Delneri, Giuseppe Papadopulo, Renzo Gobbo, Rosario Pergolizzi, Stefano Colantuono, Davide Ballardini, Walter Zenga, Delio Rossi, Serse Cosmi, Stefano Pioli, Devis Eat, Bortolo Mutti, Giuseppe Sannino, Gian Piero Gasperini, Alberto Malesani, Gennaro Gattuso, Giuseppe Iachini, Fabio Viviani, Giovanni Bosi, Giovanni Tedesco, Roberto De Zerbi, Eugenio Corini, Diego Lopez, Diego Bortoluzzi, Bruno Tedino.
A total of 52 coaches passed under the ax that, at more or less regular intervals, Maurizio Zamparini let go without too much remorse. Men called, chewed and spat out, without a fight: if it is true that the players pass, but the shirt remains, Zamparini has taken a concept so dear to the fans to unimaginable heights, treating the coaches as superfluous pawns, of relative, if not even ornamental, importance. In short, someone who has to stay there because the rules impose this, but who could really be anyone, each one equal to the other, none of them really indispensable.
No one is safe from an agent of chaos like MZthe initials valid both for himself and for the commercial activities that made him an entrepreneur capable of building a fortune such as to enter the world of football; not even after a win: it is the Serie A championship 2015-2016the penultimate in the top flight for both Palermo and Zamparini, and two exemptions, that of Iachini on the twelfth day and that of Ballardini on the nineteenth, come after two victories for the team, both for 1-0 respectively against Chievo and Verona. A record in the history of Italian football, but not the only one recorded in that peak season of “zamparinismo”, which went down in history for the seven exemptions: in addition to the aforementioned Iachini and Ballardini, they sat on the Rosanero bench Viviani on the twentieth day, Boss at the twenty-first, then Tedesco from the twenty-second to the twenty-fourth (all in reality little more than bureaucrats, given that the real coach of the rosanero is the Argentine Guillermo Barros Schelotto, who however does not have a UEFA license and therefore unable to sit on the Palermo bench), to then return first to Bosi for a day and then to Iachini.
A marriage between coach and president, however, is not destined to last: Zamparini, interviewed to “La Zanzara”, he does not miss his criticisms of the coach: «Can’t an owner talk about his team?… Iachini is a moron who makes teams play badly, loses games and in the last 13 has averaged 0.7 points per game and doesn’t even accept being told, try to put the team well on the pitch… Iachini has a losing mentality and doesn’t give a f***, his contract is about to expire and he will already have an agreement with another team”. The resignation arrives inevitable: Novellino arrives in his place which remains in the saddle until the thirty-second, before giving up the seat to the umpteenth return of the season, this time by Ballardini, who will wearily lead the boat to port at the end of the championship.
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