The Slow Match Report goes to Serie A

This weekend I am writing to you from Udine, inspired by Channel 4's Football Italia and Scotland's booming export of midfielders

A Saturday in the middle of the 1990s. Commercials for Woolworths and double-glazing give way to a Channel 4 logo kissed green, white and red by a spinning football. Cue the music, perky electronic notes flying us to the impossible, the unimaginable, the unearthly: Italy. Christ, the only people who had been there that we knew were our grandads during the war.

Everything about Gazzetta Football Italia was fittingly exotic. From the opening music onwards it bubbled with the different and the new: shirts in pale blues and striped blends we’d never seen, their occupants darting around stadiums of bipolar sun and shade; beautiful player names we would come to spell badly on our school exercise books, and footballers that looked like Batistuta and Signori when our world harboured footballers who looked like walnuts; an alien soundscape from round-mouthed cries of “Golllll!” to the remarkable communal whistling that refereeing misdemeanours provoked, which sounded like some kind of missile attack; a more gradual form of playing the game, in which centre-halves trapped high balls and cantered forward like that was a normal thing to do; and most of all, James Richardson.

Richardson was the pearl of Gazzetta, a presenter you dearly wished was your teacher. He could, remarkably, speak another language and drink tiny coffees like a nonchalant native. The BBC, meanwhile, had Jimmy Hill, who at any moment we felt might look directly into the camera and tell us to sit up straight and stop talking to our mothers like that. Sitting by an outside table holding up a pink newspaper became an ambition shared by thousands.

The next morning when we played our own matches, many a shirt was worn untucked. The decisions of our referees – kindly pot-bellied men who were paid no more than petrol money and all looked like Benny Hill – were now subject to hand gestures, thumbs pressed into fingers begging-style and wagged in disgust. We didn’t know what it meant, but we liked it, and in our heads we were so many Little Maldinis of the North Yorkshire mud. We drew the line, mind you, at ponytails, divine or not. At home, afterwards, we banged dirt from our studs in the back garden and then turned to Roma versus Sampdoria, or Napoli’s devilish trip to Parma on Football Italia. I can still remember the moment I asked my mum for a bowl of pasta after my morning game, rather than the customary sausage butty. The influence ran deep, deeper than our local Costcutter’s pasta sauce selection.

In that era, when so few people had Sky, we saw more complete Serie A games than we did English. Televised Sunday matches and the wonderful Gazzetta siphoned Italian football into thousands of us. Together we wondered what sports newspapers were and why in Italy a clean sheet seemed to have higher value than a goal. This was not just about the idols of Milan and Rome our dads had told us about, but about Padova, Reggiana and Foggia, about Cremonese, Brescia and Genoa. Where were they? What were they? It was just a shame that smalltown Italy never came up in Geography. A fascination, then, was born. Italy became our second footballing country.

Its allure ligers deep within some of us, “Parmalat” and “Golaccio!” among our code words. So when footballers from the country I now live in started joining Italian clubs as if a plea had been issued, it summoned that Gazzetta theme tune intrigue and felt like the perfect excuse for a Slow Match Report expedition.

The idea was that this very afternoon I’d watch Lennon Miller – cover star of Nutmeg print issue #37 – up against Lewis Ferguson; Udinese v Bologna, a classic Gazzetta goals round-up fixture. Then, Miller was injured and so now my hopes are halved and rest upon Ferguson, who may have had something of a tiring week.

Still, to chase this wild goose after Tuesday feels worthwhile. Rightly, the fireworks of Hampden are being celebrated rather than the background furnaces. McTominay, Tierney and McLean all scored deathbed goals – the type old men will one day talk of as they slip away. Yet there was also sorcery in the second, that flutter of ecstasy quickly snuffed. For his corner, Ferguson appeared to put a delayed spin on the ball so that for a second it took a predictable trajectory before deviating sharply, a drunk walking forwards and then falling suddenly onto a bin. It was beautiful. Beyond that moment, he was imperious, an educated terrier. Worthy, in fact, of the headline on a pink newspaper’s front page, read out loud with a tiny coffee nearby.

The latest issue of Nutmeg is rolling off the printing presses as we speak. It’s the ‘free-kick’ issue (see cover below) and features Stephen McGowan, Jonathan Northcroft, Charlie Mulgrew and a cameo appearance from the free-kick genius himself, Andrea Pirlo. The best deal to get on-board is our annual pass, which gets you full digital access AND the next FOUR copies of the magazine. Select ‘annual’ and we’ll (and your postman) do the rest 📫