Smiles from the locker room by Matteo Resca

Every now and then I look around in the locker room and smile. I think of the years in which I was the silent young man in the corner and about the hard work I put to earn my very first call in the team. I remember that even then there was a phrase going around that I found very unpleasant. Nonetheless later on, I got used to it and accept it.The phrase was going along like "Gosh! The game level has indeed fallen in recent years." But how? And now while I finally make it in the top team you are telling me that the quality has dropped? Who said so?? Who are the ones to judge on this decline? - I did not understand. I went on to train every day. Just at that time somebody new in the team appeared in our daily routine. A person with a role that in Italy has been disappearing. He passed to us his love for handball, his passion and his experience. Vladimir Brzic played a key role for me and for the guys at Ferrara. Vladimir taught us the meaning of sacrifice. We came to realize that to achieve certain results we had to choose between the afternoon with friends or training. Someone left the team, someone else came back. Along the time the relationship with Vlado deteriorated and his weaknesses took him away from Ferrara.The group continued to grow though. Infact across the years, we moved between the series B and A2 thanks to the passion that kept the original team together. I made a different choice though as I decided to move to a top team eventually. I left the group and walked a path that at the time I did not imagine so difficult. I had been living two years away from home. I met new people. I made some new friends and that was the beauty and the victory of the sport, but this cast a shadow. The salary I took in those two years was low if compared with what a player had to endure to prove oneself. Despite struggling with money, I carried on doing my best but those voices in the locker room were constantly filled with anxiety and fear. There were those mates who had bills to pay and kids to support. There were those looks crossing the room, the awareness of being in the same boat that sooner or later would sink. I was 19 years old. The environment, in which I was, soon became crowded with lost souls, sold to a passion that would never pay off. A couple of years went by still floating in the same situation. I had the talent but my knees were telling another story. I went for surgery once, twice and a third time. I was broke with little money and not a single university exam done. I looked at my knees several times and I realized that a knee would not move as before. I decided to leave the “sinking boat” and go back home. Our original group was still there but not as united as when I left it. That passion that distinguished it was also gone. I tried to look for fragments of that passion but no longer existed even in youth teams. I was disappointed. I spoke with the team management and the coach. I wanted more unity, more effort, but it seemed that what I was saying was something out of reality and impossible to understand. I decided to leave. I changed my team again and I found myself disappointed. I found an ambitious club and I got lost in that ambition. I liked it and the commitments made by both sides were kept through. I grew as a player; after so long I got called in the national team. Afterwards a cup semi-final and a top league playoffs final came through, but I had to cheer them both from home. Mine is a tragicomic story indeed as I had to skip those two important matches due to a broken finger and a stomach bug. The facade was beautiful and happy but once again the team situation was about to collapse. Suddenly all those fears of failure and a possible lack of income came back to haunt me. Where to go? What to do? How shall I pay the car? What about the university fees? And here I go again on another boat full of lost souls. It has been four years since I came back home. I looked at my body. I had a new scar on one hand, nothing serious but I was tired. I returned to Ferrara.It has been over eight years since I left home dreaming. Over the years, there have been certain factors that have caused the crisis in Italian handball but it has definitely gone too far. What hurts the most is the knowledge that nothing is left to the youngsters. Very few Vlado Brzic can be seen leading Italian teams and consequently very few talents decide to jump into the fray. We have been witnessing in a passive way the folding of a reality that year after year becomes uglier and bitter. Last year I decided to enrol in the first level-coaching course but it was cancelled. We find ourselves with kids coaching other kids and the notorious phrase “Gosh! The game level has indeed fallen in recent years!”, almost painted on the walls of the locker room. I find myself playing in the top league with a bunch of good but inexperienced boys and where unskilled referees have been promoted from junior leagues. This year we have got a top league with three groups of ten teams each which was supposed to cut costs and to lower the quality of the game. Every now and then I find myself called in the national team without much notice. Furthermore I have to show with only a couple of training sessions behind, to be able to team up with players who I haven’t seen for months and to play against well trained opponents with weeks of training sessions and preparation tournaments.. Here I am smiling then, while two kids are wondering if Radovcic is left-handed or right-handed. I smile dreaming of a league of 14 or 16 teams where the game level is kept low by a status of semi professionalism and not by three groups of clueless kids. I smile as my knees squeak… and I get up from the bench with a grimace of pain. A player in my condition, along with inexperienced boys is going to play for the third place in the toughest group in the Italian league. What’s up? Does not it make you smile, does it?