One day in 1985 I received a ‘phone call from Gianni Brera. “If I am not mistaken – he said – you are the grandson of a district doctor”. I replied this was true, that I bore the same name and surname of that doctor, Giulio Nascimbeni, and that in my small town in Veneto he had even been dedicated a square and a bust. “Well – Brera continued – why don’t you write a story about this ancestor of yours” I’ll have it published on a journal called “Leadership Medica”. How about that? I agreed, the story was published with the title “An Old Doctor’s Christmas”, and after that story my contribution continued with “Il Lunario”. You may be wandering as to the reason for such reminiscences.
Well, the Milan Arena, whose construction was undertaken in 1806 to pay a tribute to Napoleon, has been named after the great sports journalist Gianni Brera (who was born in San Zenone Po in 1919 and died in Codogno in 1992). Over these past two centuries, the Arena has hosted all sorts of events: circus games, horse parades, balloon ascents, parachutists’ airdrops, concerts and worldwide athletic gatherings. In 1928 it also became the Inter team soccer stadium, whereas the other Milano team, named Milan, played at San Siro.

Remembering Brera means first of all talking about his language. Let us start by referring to quite a different field. In the wonderful foreword to “La Scienza in cucina e l’Arte di mangiare bene” [Blending Cuisine and Science: the Art of Keeping a Good Table”] by Pellegrino Artusi, reprinted in 1970, the literature historian Piero Camporesi mentioned an early 19th century Milanese gourmet, Giovan Felice Luraschi, who “made up” a strange language to be blended with the “great macaronic-Lombard-Po Valley linguistic dog’s dinner handed down form Teofilo Folengo’s days to those of Gianni Brera”.
This mention, with its four and a half-century leap (from Folengo to Brera), was meant as a tribute to the person who, more than anyone else, renewed above all the language of soccer. Even when he was still alive, graduation dissertations used to be (and still are) prepared on Brera, strict seriations have been produced as to the innumerable neologisms created in his writings and dictionaries host his “copyright words”.
One example will be sufficient: the word “abatino” which, according to the Devoto-Oli Italian Dictionary, besides meaning “young priest with a hint of worldliness”, also means “a gifted athlete who lacks an agonistic temperament”. An abatino par excellence was the extraordinary Gianni Rivera. When attack players where rather short of stature and not very inclined to breakthrough actions, Brera would complain that that team’s attack suffered from “a high abatino-style rate”. Venturing into quotations from articles and books by “giuanbrerafucarlo” [Giuan Brera son of Carlo] (as he jokingly loved to introduce himself) means to attempt the impossible: the number of lines we are allowed in our “Lunario” would not be sufficient.
However, it is just as impossible to resist the temptation to provide a few examples. Let us start with nicknames: “Rombo di tuono” [thunderclap] for the attacker Gigi Riva with his highly powerful shot; “Deltaplano” [hang-glider] for the doorkeeper Walter Zenga; “Divino Scorfano” [divine scorpion fish] for Maradona, who was brilliant but short of stature; “Schopenhauer” for the trainer Osvaldo Bagnoli, who tended to be pessimistic as to his team’s the results; “Sala-el-Din” for the back player Claudio Gentile, born in Libya; “Stradivialli” for the attacker Gianluca Vialli, born in Cremona, birthplace of the unrivalled lute-makers Stradivari; the “Tre Batavi” [the three Batavians], referring to the three Dutch players playing the Milan team, Gullit, Van Basten and Rijkaard: the image comes straight out of two lines by Giuseppe Parini: “de’ Batavi mercanti / le molte di tesoro arche pesanti” [the many Batavian merchants’ arks, heavy with treasures”].
Brera loved a masculine-type game, and consequently real athletes had to be “bipallici” [true sign of virility], offer their billon-worth muscles to their “patria pedatoria” [kicking country], and not “corricchiare, ciabattare, sfruculiare” [run around as a housewife], thus proving to be “omarini, brocchetti, mezzecalze” [second-raters] affected by “gnagnera” [apathy]. For Brera a header was an “incornata” [goring], a “full neck” shot became “cyclonic” and if a “cyclonic” shot lead to a goal, it had to be admired as a “ballistic wonder”. Brera’s brilliant linguistic creativity knew no bounds or breaks.
Even Latin proved useful.
I can mention here the term “prestipedatore”, coined on the “prestidigitator” model form the Latin word “praestigia,ae”, first declension feminine noun, which means “trickery, illusion, subterfuge”. Brera used the term “prestipedatore” in referring to players who knew how to master “dribbling”, that is getting past the rival player with foot and body feints. Another Brera neologism is “zonagro”, to address the supporters of the “zone-type game” rather than the “man-type game”.
Brera preferred the latter type, which privileged defence rather than attack, and therefore “zonagro” acquired a rather negative, or even sarcastic, connotation. “Zonagros” were on the whole “nesci” (that is: ignorant), as they proved not to understand the typical features of Mediterranean athletes, who go astray in the midfield “mare magnum” and are forced to conduct a regular “eretismo podistico” [foot erethism]. The “Euclidean” measures of the game thus fail, even though soccer remains, for those who play it and for those who comment the game, a “mistero senza fine bello” [“incredibly beautiful mystery”]: this last quote will transfer the reader at a dizzy speed from the furious, whistling and often boorish atmosphere of stadiums to line 289 of the poem “La signorina Felicita” by Guido Gozzano: the line in which the “incredibly beautiful mystery” is a woman.
I would ask the “Lunario” readers not to ask clarifications as to the difference between “zone-type game” and “man-type game”. The technical details do not fall within the themes I meant to deal with. I can only add that, based on my own experience as a newspaper observer rather long in the tooth, I have rarely found more polemical texts or more fiery debates compared to those which I am only touching on here.
Volumes would be required to tackle the pseudo-algebra of “4 + 4 + 2” or “5 + 4 + 1”, of “WM” or of its opposite “MW”. One of these evenings I shall be going to the Arena for a concert, of for an athletic gathering, and I shall enjoy the opportunity of quietly saying to myself that I am going to the Brera Arena.
I hope it will be a moonlit starry night.
Dear, incomparable, invaluable “giuanbrerafucarlo”, to close this article I would like to quote the sad Latin formula you used to refer to in saying goodbye to the great champions who left this world: “Sit tibi terra levis”: dear friend, may the earth lie light upon thee. (traslation by Interpres)