Inside Hellas Verona (out the blue still into the black)

Hi everybody, 
last 26th Februar I´ve been called by Frank to enjoy Top 100 but my gladness to participate was countered the team: Hellas Verona. Besides Inter and Juventus only one other team is very hated by Milan supporters: Hellas Verona. This is because Milan lost a couple of championships in the 70´s and 90´s playing away against Hellas and the rust is still vivid. I´m an old Milan supporter, or if you want, I´ve been Milan supporter for many years living 2 relegations in serie B in the 80´s. Since Berlusconi as Chairman started to use Milan to have more visibility through the brand, society and supporters for his personal/political reasons, my love for Milan has been cool off in the past 25 and more years. Almost frozen I would say.  Anyway when I got the invitation I thought …for 20-30 seconds if to deny or to accept. I had to say to myself that this is just a game and it won´t have any effect in me in the real life, like start to sympathize for them. Hellas Verona is in this year relegating in serie B and I´m fine with it, totally. I obviously accepted the role because was too big the gratefulness to be part of Top100 and then I saw the situation. It was desperate, to be generous.

Hellas was lying to the bottom of the 4^th division with only 5 points after 15 games, no victories, and a gap of 12 points to the safeness, with a goal difference of -36. I thought that the challenge was big (but very big!), still not impossible. The first thing to do was to improve the quality of the team and then give to the players my way to play, working on their heads, erasing step by step their average, studying the opponents, working hard and hope!.Since that day my team played 14 games and we are now 18^th, with 4 points to the safeness. We won 8 games, 1 tied and 5 losses but above all in the last 8 games we got 19 points. At least if we have to relegate to the 5^th division let´s do it with some dignity, isn´t? And above all if I safe Hellas maybe Milan will call me to manage the team next season. The actual Milan´s manager seems to be in big troubles there, not too far from the real life, I mean J


Until now I didn´t participate to the blog which I read every day. The official reason was because the team didn´t allow me to take part to the social event of Top100. We were so desperate that what could have I wrote? Now that we are not in the deep as before, the unofficial reason can come out.
I´m quite shy because I´m writing you in English. Most of you are of English mother tongue, easy for you to write eh? , it comes natural to you English write and communicate in English, isn´t? I imagine it. While I´m Italian, from Roma, living in Denmark with my lovely Danish wife Pia and I would be more comfortable writing you in Italian, believe me. We talk English at home, we do not use Danish or Italian which we could. She knows very well how Italians talk a lot with the body, the face, hands always in movement to explain, to clarify, to reinforce the verbal and I´m very emphatic man, I can´t just stand by. Furthermore sometimes happen that I use “Italenglish” at home, it consists of mixing two words of Italian or Latin origin and put it in English form for example: from “sorprendere” (to surprise) instead of “surprising you” I said “sorprending you”. Or instead of “sensitize” I said “sensibilize”, from “sensibilizzare” in Italian. Actually she understood the meaning even if I used two words that don´t exist. I hope I didn´t make many grammar mistakes here because as the old Latins were used to say “Scripta manent, verba volant” If I mistake when I write it will stay in the blog in my memory, a spoken word flies away…Here you are a good example of “Italenglish” (The Italian man who went to Malta)

 All the best,
Marco