Can You Watch a Derby From the Cheap Seats?
Eight thousand, eight hundred kilometres from Seoul, Pescara's Christmas Eve derby against Avellino was a small ground, a cold sea wind, and 7,875 people who knew exactly what it meant.
The last time I wrote this column, I was leaving Seoul World Cup Stadium with the sound of sixty thousand people still in my ears. That was nine days ago. Now I am on a train from Rome, rattling east through the Apennines, and the carriage is full of Pescara supporters going home for Christmas. One of them, a man my age in a navy scarf with a dolphin on it, offers me a piece of torrone. 'You don't go to a derby on an empty stomach,' he says. It is soft almond nougat, and it is very good.
The train takes four hours and twenty minutes from Termini, with a change at Sulmona. The ticket costs thirty-two euros. By the time we reach Pescara Centrale, the sun is low and the air off the Adriatic is sharp. The ground is a fifteen-minute walk along the river, past the fishing boats and the closed beach umbrellas. The Stadio Adriatico-Giovanni Cornacchia is not a big place: two covered side stands, a curve of open terracing at one end, and behind the far goal, the sea. From my seat in the Curva Nord, I can hear it between the chants.
The night is cold, but the welcome is not. Outside the ground, a van sells arrosticini, the little skewers of mutton that are Pescara's pride. I eat five, standing by the wall, and talk to a man called Franco. 'Avellino?' he says. 'They think they are better than us because they have more of the ball. But football is not about the ball. It is about what you do when you lose it.' He shrugs. 'Tonight we will see.'
Inside, the crowd is 7,875, and every one of them seems to know the words. The teams come out to a wall of noise, and for ten minutes, Pescara press hard. Then Avellino score, and it is a goal that silences the Curva Nord like a slammed door. Fabiano Mangiavacchi, sixteen minutes in, takes a pass from Mario Viggiani on the right and hits it low past Gracjan Sobolewski. The away end, a small pocket of green and white, erupts. The Pescara fans around me do not boo. They just stand, arms crossed, and watch.
Avellino are patient, and Pescara are not. The home side have 32 per cent of the ball, and when they do get it, they hurry. Michele Di Luca makes it two four minutes before half-time, a header from a corner that should have been cleared. It is his fourth goal of the season, and the Pescara defence look at each other as if they have never met. In the second half, Riccardo Fabrizi is sent off four minutes after the restart, and the game is over as a contest. Pescara finish with ten men and no goals.
After the match, I walk back to the station with Franco. He is quiet for a long time. Then he says, 'You know what the problem is? We have no luck. And no left-back.' He laughs, but it is not a happy laugh. 'Merry Christmas,' he says, and shakes my hand.
On the train back to Rome, I think about the long way from Seoul to Pescara. It is 8,814 kilometres, but the distance between a big stadium and a small one is not measured in miles. It is measured in what the people bring with them. Tonight, Pescara brought torrone, arrosticini, and a belief that somehow, despite everything, the next derby will be different. It probably will not be. But they will be there, in the Curva Nord, listening to the sea.