![]() Five years later the club had fallen on even harder times and was in the process of being wound up. The whole thing went to court and De Laurentiis reluctantly gave up on the idea. He tried without success in 1999 a year after Napoli’s traumatic relegation. Raised in the Eternal City, a passion for Napoli was passed down to Aurelio by his father who took him to games in Fuorigrotta. If you happen to have seen Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time in Hollywood it evokes the time when De Laurentiis’ uncle used to attract US film stars over to Rome where the costs of production were a fraction of what they were in Los Angeles. Dino produced a couple of Fellini’s Academy Awards-winning flicks as well as Serpico. His father Luigi and uncle Dino grew up in the shadow of Vesuvius in Torre Annunziata, the last stop before the frozen-in-time Pompeii. Napoli’s movie mogul owner Aurelio De Laurentiis will no doubt keep the film rights for his Filmauro studio. No divine intervention has been necessary. Think of this Scudetto as a superstition buster, a masterpiece rather than a miracle touched by the Hand of God. It’s what kept them warm in Udine tonight, all the way up there on the Slovenian border the place where Victor Osimhen scored the title-clinching goal. Luciano Spalletti looked at it this way: Napoli get to enjoy that winning feeling for longer. Even Salernitana’s party postponing draw at the Maradona on Sunday did not cause too much despair. By being 17 points clear at the top of Serie A ahead of last weekend’s round of fixtures this Napoli team has even cured the city of heptadecaphobia, the long held belief as written down in the Neapolitan Smorfia, a book used to interpret dreams and play tombola, that the No.17 brings disgrazia and bad luck. They are everywhere, fluttering in the wind like the blue and white streamers strewn overhead in every street in town.Īny fear at upsetting the cosmos has lifted like a low cloud over the bay. A tricolour with the No 3 (a third league title in Napoli’s 96-year history) has been fixed to it. The entrance to a bar on the corner where Carabinieri sip coffee is now heart shaped and lit with blue LED lights. Market stalls on via Giulio Cesare have been selling t-shirts showing Vesuvius erupting in the colours of the Italian flag. On the balcony of an apartment facing the rebaptised Stadio Diego Armando Maradona, a banner has proclaimed Napoli “Champions of Italy 2022-23” for weeks. Recent visitors to Naples honestly won’t know what to make of it all. The clip showed Angelo Voiello, the conniving cardinal and incurable Napoli fan, rejoicing a Scudetto under a fountain. He was worried leaving it in would hex the team. ![]() Sorrentino even deleted a scene from his television series The Young Pope out of scaramanzia. Napoli fans celebrate in Largo Maradona in Naples (Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP via Getty Images) The rational is replaced by a magical realism. It’s why Maradona is venerated as a saint, exhibitions about his life are held in churches rather than museums and fans continue to make a pilgrimage to the murals in the city’s Spanish quarter. Winning the league in the years AD (After Diego, 33 long years ago) has long felt impossible in the absence of a player considered not of this world. “He made a gift of his football just as Pino Daniele (the great Neapolitan musician) made a gift of his music and Massimo Troisi (the great Neapolitan comic) made a gift of his cinema.” “He was my friend even though I never knew him,” Sorrentino said. The Argentinian has regularly featured in Sorrentino’s work as divinity and artist. D.10.S as Maradona is still known in Naples, God in a No.10 shirt, intervened to prevent him suffering the same fate. A carbon monoxide leak had killed his parents. A neighbour informed him there had been a tragedy. When Sorrentino returned, he rang the doorbell but no one answered. One Sunday he left their holiday home in Abruzzo to watch Maradona play in Empoli. During the glory years, Sorrentino used to beg his father Sasa to let him go and follow Napoli on the road.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |