In Udine Zico is still an intimate story

In the corners of the stadiums, where the cheering is more chaotic and irrational, stormy at times, where you don’t just go to watch the game because the point of view is the worst possible, but where you rather participate in the game, flags are waving that are like the paintings of the house: they are always in the same place and are noticed only when they are missing. It often happens that on those flags or on some enormous banners stretched between two long poles players who have been symbols of a team, both of the present and of the past, are depicted, because of some footballers of several decades ago there are no images with other colors if not those of the shirt they wore in a particular stadium. And it would also seem strange to see them in photographs that portray them with the away shirt of the same club, which by definition has different colors. It is therefore possible that the young Friulian fans have asked their fathers, mothers, or perhaps grandparents who was the one who is on the flag that waves every now and then in the north curve at the Dacia Arena in Udine, even if in these cases it would be better to say Stadio Friuli . That player is Arthur Antunes Coimbrathat is to say Zico, which is one of those that mark the generations. There are those who saw him and welcomed him and then there are those who weren’t able to see him and so listen to the stories, and maybe don’t even fully understand what it was like to have Zico in Udine.

Zico has turned seventy who was at that moment still one of the strongest playmakers – at the time it was a position – on the planet, and his purchase by Udinese is in itself a story that describes an era. Flamengo was asking for six billion lire, which Lamberto Mazza, president of Udinese and Zanussi, the second largest – albeit declining – industrial group in Italy, paid for 40 percent through a certain Grouping Limited, a company founded ad hoc, and the rest with black and white funds, which were barely enough. The FIGC suspected that there were not enough guarantees, therefore the president Federico Sordillo, who in ’80 had reopened the borders to foreign athletes, blocked the transfer of Zico together with that of Cerezo to Roma, to make the most in-depth checks possible, and the July 2 canceled them. At the news of the cancellation of the transfer, the people of Udine gathered in Piazza XX Settembre, not far from the city cathedral, with the famous signs saying “O Zico o Austria”, threatening an improbable secession. After all, it was a dream that was fading. And to think that on 31 May 1983, when the local newspaper, Il Messaggero Veneto, gave the news of the concrete negotiation with Flamengo, few believed it, thinking about it a few days later.

In the end, Zico wore black and white and a legacy remained that is nothing more than a story. A personal story, which goes on undeterred, because it marked the lives of many people, who from liking the team of their city have gone on to have posters, photos, newspaper clippings, cartoons of Zico in their bedrooms. Above all because he was already an absolute champion, he had played in a great World Cup in 1982, and had already scored more than 360 goals before arriving in Italy.

Speaking with the Udinese, but more generally with the Friulians who are now at least fifty years old, the impression emerges that Before Zico’s arrival, Udine was a large town in which provincial dynamics simply took place on a larger scale, while with Zico’s arrival the city had actually begun to be such. Every day at the Moretti Stadium, where the park of the same name is located today, thousands of people attended the training sessions of the Brazilian playmaker, and then also of the other black and white people, but only then. And in the same place there were journalists, which was already an uncommon fact, and they weren’t just Italians, which was instead a new fact.

In narratives like this, verification is often nearly impossible since memories are crystallized, but it also becomes superfluous. On 6 November Zico scored the winning goal against Rome, the Italian champions of the previous year, on the 85th, Udinese won and some say that the scream of the 45,000 people who filled the Friuli stadium, which was it’s at the Rizzi, a neighborhood just outside the city, he felt even hundreds and hundreds of meters away from that area. “We had the radio, obviously it was ’83, but we knew that Zico had scored even before hearing it from whoever was reporting the match”.

Stories like Zico’s two years in Udine, of which only one was actually really exciting – with his 22 goals in 40 total games – are after all an intimate story, of which the Juventus supporters are jealous from day one. More than one Udinese would say that Zico didn’t “arrive” in Udine, because they went to pick him up at the airport. And any boy or girl who was surprised by a huge crowd at any event, be it a concert or a demonstration, would reply that “you should have seen when Zico arrived”.