FOOTBALL: Totti and the “olives” – when superstition becomes a goal

“Totti is really good but unlucky” Pelè said one day. “I was hoodooed” said the football player while entering the hospital where he was operated, certainly he wasn’t referring to ‘ o rei’; but he was addressing to “all those discussion about my possible expulsion vs. Udinese team and I broke my leg”. Soccer and superstition: an inseparable combination, with propitiatory ceremonies, magicians and witches and mistaken predictions, even by the most famous champion who was been considered a jinx also in his country in Brazil. Therefore Ronaldo smiles if Pelè says that the phenomenon will never return as he was before. In fact ‘o rei’, never guesses a prediction, as it is said in his country; he said that the World Championship would be a disaster for the Selezao; the team of Scolari won, instead. If he says that somebody is unlucky, many people are frightened: when he said that about Totti, this football player had the terrible accident that was going to stop him from playing the World championship, won afterwards in Germany. Though soccer has changed over the years, its protagonists are still anchored to several superstitions. Mario Zagallo, world champion as player and trainer, was famous for his fixation to wear the shirt numbered 13 because he and his wife were devotee of Saint Antony, whose feast is celebrated on the 13th of June. Another Brazilian, the “king of Rome”, Paulo Roberto Falcao, always wanted to touch the grass at the moment he entered the ground, and then he made the sign of the cross. Before starting the match Bobby Moore wore his shorts at the last moment and his companion, and world champion in 1996, Bobby Styles used to smear his breast and his face with oil. The trainer of Argentine Carlos Bilardo was coherent to the end: he wore the same tie for all the championships of 1986 and 1990 getting respectively the first and the second place. But it isn’t all: before the first match of his national team at Mexico ’86 he borrowed a tooth paste from a football player, so he decided to repeat this ceremony till the final of the Azteca Stadium vs. the Germans. Even at the world championship in Italy in 1982 there were some superstitions ceremonies, Tardelli always put a holy picture in his socks (even “Mumo” Orsi did it in the championship of 1934); Gentile never cut his moustaches and he blocked Zico and Maradona; before each match B. Conti kneeled down in the locker room and shouted some slogans with is companions. In 2002 the trainer Giovanni Trapattoni trusted a bottle of holy water given to him by his sister-mum. The French trainer Raymond Domenech believes in the horoscope and he consults the Zodiac before taking any decision. In fact he rarely calls players born under certain sins (Scorpio or Lion). As for French: Laurent Blanc always kissed the goalkeeper Barthez’s bald head before every match the bleus played. Thousands of superstitions come from Africa: when Arena Dindane ex Anderlecht player now playing for Lens, couldn’t score any goal, two sheep and a turkey were sacrificed to solve this problem. The Camerun team always brought the magician with them; while before the final of the last Africa Cup the Egyptian footballers killed a cow the animalists protested, but the Pharaons effectively won the cup.