San Lorenzo, nasce l'Atletico per un calcio popolare e un'altra idea di quartiere

di Gabriele Santoro

ROMA – San Lorenzo. Un paesone nel cuore di Roma che si trasforma, sempre in bilico sul confine labile tra centro e periferia: in origine popolare, resistente, oggi universitario alla ricerca di una nuova identità e di un senso dello stare insieme. Dudley. Un distretto siderurgico delle West Midlands alle prese con gli esiti della deindustrializzazione, che ha stravolto il paesaggio urbano senza alternativa alla desocializzazione della classe operaia. Due luoghi distanti, smarriti e uniti da una passione antica: il calcio. Quello giocato tra i vicoli del quartiere, fatto di rivalità sanguigne e sogni di riscatto dalla miseria nera. Stasera le due storie s’incontreranno in piazza dei Sanniti attraverso la penna neorealista e brillante di Anthony Cartwright, venuto in città per una presentazione inedita del suo Heartland (66thA2nd, 288 pagine, 17 euro).

I sanlorenzini dall’anima bella, che resistono ai processi di gentrification, non hanno dimenticato quella passione, ed emozionandosi ricordano ancora le due campane calcistiche: la Basilica San Lorenzo di padre Giustino Ferazzoli e del presidente Tonino Marcellini, terzino romano e romanista purosangue, e la Romana dello Sport, rossa Pci. «Da vent’anni ci manca una squadra di quartiere che aggreghi...». Un’esigenza che in pochi mesi ha portato alla nascita dell’Atletico San Lorenzo. Terza categoria. Maglia rossoblu. Sul petto lo stemma che raffigura Porta Tiburtina e due martelli incrociati per i ferrovieri, gli operai e gli artigiani che hanno visto sorgere il quartiere. Quattrocento tessere di soci sono state già staccate, e cresce l’attesa per l'esordio in campionato al campo Artiglio (Stazione Tiburtina). Una rosa di ventotto giovani calciatori, perlopiù studenti volontari, residenti in zona si sta allenando da settembre ai Cavalieri di Colombo (Via dei Sabelli). Il centenario Bar Marani, dove a luglio si è svolta la prima assemblea aperta a tutte le anime di San Lorenzo, insieme ad altri esercenti storici ha garantito un sostegno decisivo. Sognando il calcio immaginifico di Osvaldo Soriano è stato stabilito un gemellaggio con il suo San Lorenzo de Almagro.

«Il calcio è uno strumento di unione straordinario, e da una squadra possono svilupparsi innumerevoli attività: dalla pulizia delle strade a incontri letterari. Intendiamo riappropriarci degli spazi pubblici per ricostruire legami. Basta con il degrado culturale della movida senza misura e della droga. E vogliamo vivere il tifo in modo libero, spontaneo e non violento», dicono in coro il presidente Francesco Panuccio, il vice Marco “Duka” Anastasi e capitan futuro Ruggero Apruzzese.

«Il calcio è ancora lo sport del popolo, e offre molti più elementi di condivisione che di divisione - sostiene Cartwright -. Vi ritrovi ogni aspetto della vita: avidità, generosità, amore, fedeltà, odio, benessere, povertà, amicizia e rivalità. Il progetto Atletico riunisce l'intera comunità. In questa passione si delinea necessariamente una dimensione politica nell’accezione più ampia di partecipazione. In Inghilterra sta crescendo il numero di club posseduti dai tifosi, radicati intorno a una comunità: il Newport County, il Mertyr Town FC o il Chester FC per citarne qualcuno. Squadre risorte grazie ai fans dopo gestioni finanziarie scellerate». Con Cartwright l’Atletico promuove un’idea essenziale ed etica del football: trasparenza nei bilanci, merchandising responsabile, lealtà sportiva, antirazzismo senza bandiere di partiti o movimenti. Calcio e letteratura andranno a braccetto: in cantiere, come prossimi ospiti eccellenti del club, ci sono Nick Hornby e David Peace (Il maledetto United).

In Heartland il calcio, invece, è una manifestazione delle divisioni sociali. La cittadinanza di Dudley è in subbuglio per l’edificazione di una mega moschea sulle macerie delle vecchie acciaierie. Pochi giorni prima della sfida Inghilterra-Argentina ai mondiali nippo-coreani del 2002, i dilettanti del Cinderheath Fc si giocano il titolo contro la squadra della locale comunità musulmana: una partita ad alta tensione alimentata dalla speculazione xenofoba del British National Party. «Nel plot Cinderheath rimane isolata dalla chiusura della sua fabbrica, e sgretolata dalle enclavi etniche - conclude Cartwright -. Lo Stato sociale, dalla scuola disertata al boom della disoccupazione, qui è fallito. Tuttavia i protagonisti rifiutano di conformarsi al declino a loro riservato. Gli invisibili provano a reagire. Un sequel confortante del romanzo prevederebbe la fusione delle due squadre rivali, nello spirito dell’Atletico, per una nuova idea di Cinderneath».

Anthony Cartwright: Heartland, calcio, politica e letteratura

di Gabriele Santoro

http://lnx.66thand2nd.com/intervista-a-anthony-cartwright/

Mr. Cartwright, is it still possible to consider today’s football, submerged with money and scandals, as a social passion, something one can identify himself with, something that is able to express the needs and the positive drives of society?

«Football is still the people's game. Top-level professional football is a house built on sand, that much seems clear, financially, morally... What's strange, though, is that people still identify a great deal with the players. It's not the players' fault that they end up in the bubble they are in. And the players, after all, are still overwhelmingly from working-class backgrounds. Rooney, Bale, Gerrard - they would be playing if there was no money in football at all. Of course, the top-level is only the tip of an iceberg. Football at all levels is full of people driven by love and loyalty, passion and camaraderie. That is also what makes it such an interesting topic to write about. I should add that football is not the cause of social division in Heartland, it is a manifestation of it. Football specifically offers much more to unite us than divide us. All of life is in it: greed, genorosity, love, hate, wealth, poverty, friendship, rivalry, and so on...».

How English people live their relationsip with football in the present time? Is it a simple relief from everydays problems or there’s something more?

«"The game is about glory," Danny Blanchflower  (Villa, Spurs, Northern Ireland) famously said. It's about adventure and magic and, yes, an escape from everyday problems. But in anything that creates such passion and brings people together in such numbers there is a political dimension. I think the advent of "fan-power" - I'm thinking of events such as the formation of FC United of Manchester (a club created in response to the commercialisation of Manchester United) and AFC Wimbledon (formed by fans when Wimbledon FC left for Milton Keynes and became the MK Dons), plus supporters resurrecting clubs that went into liquidation, such as Newport County - is a real phenomenon of recent years and an antidote to all the commercial shenanigans of the big clubs. What's great is that all the money in the world can't tarnish the beauty of the game. If the money disappeared tomorrow, football would still be here».

How is the relationship between football and politics, so present in your book,  evolving in  England?

«A very positive aspect, I think, is the growth in fan-ownership, community-centred clubs. I mentioned FC United, AFC Wimbledon, Newport County. We could add to that list Merthyr Town FC and Chester FC among others, who are clubs that were resurrected by fans following financial mismanagement by previous owners. Or AFC Liverpool, a club formed by people who could no longer afford the ticket prices in the Premier League. (Newport and Merthyr are Welsh clubs that play in the English league system, by the way). Issues about race continue in different forms - the lack of black managers and coaches being given a chance at a high level, the absence of professional players from Asian backgrounds, rows about racist chanting and high-profile racist comments made on the pitch (John Terry, Luis Suarez). One thing to say in English football's favour is that these issues are at least out in the open. With much of the injustice in our society - racism included - there are attempts by the powerful to hide it away, to simply pretend there is no problem. On that note, I feel I must mention the heroism of the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, who have fought all these years to expose the truth about what happened on the day of the disaster (when 96 Liverpool fans were crushed to death at the 1989 FA Cup Semi-Final) and to expose the subsequent political cover-up».  

Jim’s character is representative of the Labour crisis, of its inability in governing social changes and speak to the traditional socialist electorate, as a consequence of the process of deindustrialization and the end of the traditional concept of work. Is “The Spirit of 45” unrecoverable? 

«I think "The Spirit of '45" is still alive, although maybe it's a small flame, and you are right that Jim feels exhausted by the pace of change (for the worse) his community has been put through. Right-wing criticism of "the spirit of 45", and of Ken Loach's recent film of the same name, incidentally, is that those years have gone and any sense of collectivism, universalism, the welfare state, socialism...is merely nostalgia for a world that has disappeared. Of course, the world has changed. And the impact of deindustrialization means British society has changed utterly, as Jim feels so acutely in Heartland. But a belief in social justice, in equality, in simple human dignity, a society where people look after each other "from cradle to grave" will always be relevant and I think will return to the political mainstream in the coming years».

Do you think that suburbian areas are just an agglomerate of individual and social defeats, that can generate only social tensions, or is it possibile to think about them as a social lab for new ideas of life in the community?

«There are very clear problems when the economic divisions in society are replicated geographically. In Heartland, Cinderheath is isolated because of the closure of its industry, and then the communities who live there are further isolated by a retrenchment into a "white" area and an "asian" area due to all kinds of issues - housing, culture, transport, (un)employment, etc. What is interesting is when people refuse to conform to the role that the powerful in society seem to want from them - a kind of reaction that my characters Zubair and Rob are searching for, and Jim yearns for, in Heartland. A happy sequel to the novel would be the merging of the two rival teams and for them to form a new club, kind of in the spirit of Atletico San Lorenzo, to represent a new idea of Cinderheath».

  

European newspapers narrate the unsetting rise of fascist deviations like greek  “Golden sunrise”. What can you tell us about the racists movements in Great Britain? 

«The British National Party has collapsed as an electoral force. In the 2012 local elections it lost most of its council seats. This is the good news. However, the threat from the far right remains a problem in different forms. The English Defence League seeks to create confrontation by marching through predominantly Asian areas, in the style of Oswald Mosely's 1930s Blackshirts. More subtle, and politically more dangerous, is the influence of the far-right on the present government and on the Conservative Party in particular. The United Kingdom Independence Party, an anti-immigration, anti-European party with a more middle-class profile than previous far-right parties has gained popularity - including inside the Conservative Party - and a kind of media-driven political credibility that the BNP could only dream of. Their influence is sinister and very British - maybe just English - in the sense that they represent terrible bigotry, political extremism, feudalism, as a kind of "common sense", in the manner of eccentric suburban bank managers. I think the influence of the far-right is a kind of dirty secret of British society - it's what I was trying to symbolise by the rally at the country house in Heartland (organised by British Party backers - the inference being that they have 'upper-class' connections)».