When Luciano Ligabue resounds through Munich
Inter arrived in the Bavarian capital with numerous fans from Milan. Kicker reporter Oliver Birkner spoke with the Nerazzurri.
Forget about Bavaria – Italy's northernmost city. Just to be clear. Every year it's the Italian Oktoberfest weekend, and this season the very best fun is already at the end of May. Bus, car, train – some bets have gone badly wrong, and it's time to cycle across the Alps. No elephants, but who really thought they could take out those aliens from Catalonia? Then they came to the San Siro and were sent back to Mars. The son of the losing cycling bet family doesn't look particularly amused; cell reception was poor that high up, he says. The temptation is great to gently push him into a vortex from the payphone era, but that would surely be pointless.
Damned construction sites at the Brenner Pass. 40 km/h, 60, the convoy rolls north so slowly, it's as if you could get out and stroll alongside, smoking thanks to autopilot. The signs almost suggest leaving the car and pushing. Nerazzurri alé alé, that helps. Black and blue scarves and the battle cry "For all the kilometers I've racked up for you, you must win!"
Then it finally continues. Innsbruck, Kufstein, Rosenheim, Munich, sorry, Monaco di Bavaria. Around 50,000 people are interested in the 18,000 tickets. But you have to be there, no matter what. Better to be claustrophobic in the frenzy of Odeonsplatz than 500 kilometers south in Italy's second-northernmost city. Milan's patron saint, the Madonna on the Duomo, will forgive you.
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All the upscale fans are there, and of course they're keeping their fingers crossed. It would be a laugh. Up ahead, they're selling Pizza Lautaro at quite impressive prices, but today they're letting it slide. Or maybe ten. Eh, sai com'è, you know how it goes. A wink from one of the countless Italian expatriates visiting the Interista. He knows how it goes. He pulls out his credit card. Today, anything goes. The sausage is almost as good as the local salsiccia, porca miseria.
In the middle of the greasy frying, the younger of the two heirs to the throne calls, saying he can't stand it anymore. One of the southern invaders ignores him and hugs him. An exemplary father, he exults. Yes, but they'd still like to clarify that my Bochum has been relegated, and anyway... "I promised you as a child..." they both roar over the loudspeaker. That's what they had promised me, too, only the competition was called the European Cup back then, and no one revealed during their first visit to the stadium in 1977 that the Castroper team would never—well, you know.
"Bring me a shirt and the trophy!" demands your son. And for a brief moment, you think about thwarting his demands. A kind of payback for all those weekends when he snottily asked how many fouls Timo Horn had gotten. After all, you don't have to aim for the Father of the Year award every year.
"Bochum and Inter were the only clubs to win in Munich this season," I boldly interject – not without a certain amount of pride. "Cazzo è Bochum?" Who the fuck is Bochum? asks the dancing Interista. The son clarifies things and perhaps, in the end, is good for something after all.
But then all the Castrop-Rauxel trifles are over, and they're singing again. "With our heads held high, wherever Inter may go, our hearts above the crest." That sometimes went wrong, and the Inter spirit shattered. Perhaps that's why the Milanese have so many prominent supporters in Munich. Ronaldo, José Mourinho, Roberto Carlos, Luis Figo. All of them followers of the bizarre Inter spirit, which has been enjoying a cocktail of trophies and the apocalypse for ages.
You look around the hustle and bustle and you know why everyone is shouting to the heavens for Inter's top fan, pop-rocker Luciano Ligabue. Even the losers retain a little pride, Tom Petty once sang, and Ligabue sings the quintessence of the Interista: his Don Quixote song. Una vita da mediano, a life as number 6. Always in the middle, without well-behaved feet. No one gave you the number 10 at birth, so you have to trust your lungs. And when you've given it your all, you're replaced by your successor. Years of sacrifice and bruises. Like Oriali once did, sings Ligabue. Lele Oriali, in a sense the apotheosis of black and bruises.
They sway to the music with moist eyes. These Zanettis, Bergomis, and Orialis are now the Acerbis, Calhanoglus, and Mkhitaryans who would be on the bench at other noble courts, but who function well in Milan. "Inter is fragile and human. Inter is sometimes frigid, sometimes a whore, epic or pathetic. Inter is contradiction and opposition," the writer Michele Serra once wrote. Perhaps that's why these players from the former black-and-white TV era only fit there. Acerbi's mother surely said exactly what his mother told Tiger Gerland: "If I give you a penny for an ice cream now, you won't have any sausage on your bread by the end of the month." When Gerland once said he didn't like beer and was often injured, and his friends advised him, "Good beer will save you from torn fibers." That's how it is.
"Grande Acerbi"Perhaps an Inter victory would be the last hurrah for football in a different era. When a sliding tackle was at most a warning, and Jochen Hageleit on WDR croaked over the airwaves: "BVB free kick - distance 25 minutes." When there weren't 625 substitute balls on the touchline, and a clearance into the away end guaranteed a two-minute respite.
A nostalgic high makes you brave, and I'll throw in some Italian hopping: Acerbi is like the Tiger or Ata Lameck. They've understood one name. "Grande Acerbi, what a goal against Barca!" Indeed. The subway stops. The arena is on the horizon. "Cazzo, really like a UFO!" the boys shout in nerazzurro. They sent Jamal into the spaceship with no return ticket. It's Ligabue again. "You constantly have to take the hit and give the ball to whoever has been gifted with finer feet. And maybe one day you'll win a title." Today. Just maybe.
