FAREWELL GAME
Lazio Cosmos New York
16 octobre 1983
Chinaglia had had an unorthodox upbringing. Born in Carrara, Italy, in 1947, he had moved with his family to Wales in 1955 as his father, Mario, looked for work. As a conséquence he soon became bilingual, but spoke English with a Welsh accent. Strong-willed and single-minded, the teenage Chinaglia displayed no talent for or interest in his school- work, preferring instead to spend his days playing soccer. Indeed, it would be Chinaglia’s keen eye for goal that would eventually land him a month’s trial at nearby Swansea City. The manager of the Third Division club, Walter Robbins, had watched Chinaglia score a hat trick for Cardiff Schools against I hoir Wrexham counterparts and, impressed by what he saw, nlfored him apprentice-professional terms. His time at •Swansea, however, would corne to a prématuré end when his appalling punctuality record, coupled with his penchant for the timeless teenage temptations of drinking,
gambling and girls, had forced the club’s hand. While the young Chinaglia could call himself a professional soccer player, the harsh reality was that he was anything but. with no British clubs interested in signing him, Swansea allowed Chinaglia to move to Italian Sérié C side Massesse on a free transfer, where his talent would blossom. Within three years, Chinaglia would join Lazio for £140,000. Within nine, he would be a Lazio legend. Off the field, Chinaglia had acquired a réputation for being brusque and obstreperous; a barroom brawler who wouldn’t so much put his oar into an argument as rip the thing from its lock and slap it across the face of anyone who dared to dis- agree with him. It was a trait that had got him into trouble not just at Swansea but at the international level too. At the 1974 World Cup Final in West Germany, for example, Chinaglia had been substituted by coach Ferruccio Valcareggi during the group game against Haiti and responded with the most offensive of Italian curses, vafanculo. Injudicious as it was, Chinaglia’s crime could hâve been excused as a simple act of pétulance but for the fact that it had been transmitted live to a global télévision audience of 300 million people.
Suddenly, Giorgio Chinaglia was one of the most vilified men in Italy. Fans labeled him a traitor, he was ostracized by his teammates and condemned by the media. Although he would apologize for his outburst, thereby avoiding an early flight home from the tournament, the incident had marked the beginning of the end of Chinaglia’s time in Italy. Increasingly, Chinaglia was looking to the NASL as a way out of Sérié A and out of Rome. Loved and hated in equal measure as he was in the Eternal City, even his family were not immune from the side of the town that saw him as the devil incarnate. Once, at a Lazio versus Roma game, Chinaglia’s American wife, Connie, had been accosted by Roma fans, who had surrounded her and wrapped her in a Roma flag. Fearing for her life she had fled and demanded the family move across the Atlantic. Certainly, Chinaglia loved the American way of life. In 1972, he had played an exhibition game with Lazio in New York and enjoyed the expérience so much that he had set about house hunting there soon after, with the intention of one day swapping the insanity of his celebrity lifestyle in Rome for a slightly less manie existence in the United States. In April 1975, Chinaglia duly purchased a twenty-room man¬ sion in the well-heeled area of Englewood, New Jersey, right next door to the actress Gloria Swanson.
That summer, Chinaglia was approached by Guiseppe ‘Peppe’ Pinton, a former Classics teacher now working as a marketing consultant for the Hartford Bicentennials. Pinton was from the city of Catanzaro in the Calabria area of Italy and knew only too well the box office appeal of the Lazio striker. He called Chinaglia at Englewood and introduced himself, explaining that he wanted him to guest star in an exhibition game for Hartford against the Polish national side. Chinaglia was taken with the idea, especially the part involving an ‘undisclosed fee’. Negotiations would continue, with Pinton even chartering a plane to fly over and personally impress upon the player just how vital he was to the fixture. Finally, Chinaglia agreed. It was done, says Pinton, ‘in a shake of a hand’. With a $2 million insurance policy in place to cover Lazio and their prized asset, Chinaglia’s appearance more than doubled the expected attendance. As news filtered through of Chinaglia’s success- ful guest appearance in Connecticut, Steve Ross decided to go shopping again.
On the surface, a Chinaglia transfer to Cosmos seemed to make perfect sense, not least because New York was one of the few cities in the world large enough to accommodate the Italian’s ego. The fact that the player had long been making very public overtures about playing in the States also made a move ail the more likely. In addition to the forward’s ex- traordinary goal-scoring record (he had, for example, scored twenty-four goals in helping Lazio claim the Italian League Championship title in 1974), the fact that he already enjoyed a high profile in certain, untapped parts of the city gave the Cosmos another lead into securing more support for the club. Undoubtedly, as Gordon Bradley sat in the stands at the San Paolo stadium in Naples and watched Chinaglia lay waste to the opposition, scoring ail the goals in Lazio’s 3-0 win, he knew that here was a striker who could transform the Cosmos. His third tally typified his eye for goal and his trademark dogged- ness. Chinaglia was bearing down on goal, trying to shake off his marker. As he tried to break away, the defender reached out and grabbed Chinaglia’s shirt, pulling him back. Chinaglia, however, continued on his run even though his shirt had been ripped from his back. As the defender stopped and examined the shreds of cloth in his hands, Chinaglia went on and calmly slipped the bail past the advancing keeper and into the net. To this day, Bradley still regards that piece of brilliance as ‘the greatest goal I’ve ever seen’.
Within two weeks, Giorgio Chinaglia would be a Cosmos player. ‘He fell into our lap,’ says Clive Toye. Despite some initial opposition from Lazio’s president, Umberto Lenzini, and, intriguingly, Pelé, the clubs eventually agreed on a price of $750,000 (although Shep Messing daims the club paid just $240,000 for him). After an emotional final game against Torino, Chinaglia bade farewell to his légion of fans on Lazio’s curva nord (north terrace) and headed straight to Genoa to catch a flight to Paris. Initially , he had arranged to fly out of Rome on a scheduled Alitalia flight to the U. S. but word had spread that some distraught members of his 21,000-strong fan club were going to throw themselves in front of the plane, so he headed for Paris, and then took a private plane to his new home. Chinaglia arrived in the States to the kind of hero’s wel-ome he had grown accustomed to back home. In the Italian neighborhoods in the Bronx and Brooklyn, there were Street parties held in his honor. There was even a ‘Giorgio Chinaglia Night’ held at a hôtel on the banks of the Hudson River where hundreds of guests celebrated his arrivai by collecting cash in black bin bags to présent to their hero (who had been the highest-paid soccer player in the world when he left Lazio, earning £85,000 a year). ‘I hâve to tell you,’ says Chinaglia, ‘a lot of people wished me well, let’s put it this way.’...
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