An online commonplace book
Every team needs this player.
State side we call them defensive midfielders, or holding midfielders. Back in my U-10 parks and recreation soccer days we called them stoppers.
In Italy they’re called the Mediano, the water carrier.
John Foot describes the Italian interpretation of this player in his book Winning at all Costs: A Scandalous history of Italian Soccer:
In order for the skillful players to have the space with which to work, somebody had to get the ball, and give it to them. The playmakers couldn’t be expected to do the running that was needed, the dirty work, the pressing. Every team had at least two players of this type, if not three.
Winning at all Costs: A Scandalous history of Italian Soccer, John Foot. pg 146, 147
Juventus of course, had whom many consider to be the greatest mediani of all – Beppe Furino.
Juventus specialized in mediani, and the greatest of all was Beppe Furino in the 1970s and 1980s. Little Furino, from Palermo in Sicily, ran himself into the ground in order to get the ball to a succession of playmakers such as Franco Causio, Liam Brady and Michel Platini. Yet Furino was not a one-dimensional player. Team-mate Marco Tardelli called him ‘the most tactically intelligent player I have ever seen. He was always close to the ball.’
Winning at all Costs: A Scandalous history of Italian Soccer, John Foot. pg 148
A mediano doesn’t revel in personal glory. But their trophy cabinets are flush with silver.
The life of a mediano was thus a melancholic one. They were always destined to be the supporting act, straight men, water carriers. They could never be stars and would remain forever in the shadow of their more skillful colleagues. Furino won a record eight titles with Juventus in the 1970s and 1980s, but is rarely mentioned in accounts of those years.
Winning at all Costs: A Scandalous history of Italian Soccer, John Foot. pg 148
Beppe Furino and water carriers like him are tactical survivors. No matter the era, they remain relevant.
Label clearly. Measure twice. Eat elsewhere.
The Name of the Wind: 10th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, pg 243. Patrick Rothfuss
In case you’re asked…
Notes to Bruce Timm from the Broadcast Standards and Practices (BS&P).
How did Batman the Animated Series ever get on the air?
Excerpt from: Batman Animated, by Paul Dini and Chip Kidd.
Great are the plunges and throes and triumphs and falls of democracy,
Great the reformers with their lapses and screams,
Great the daring and venture of sailors on new explorations.
A poem for sleepy eyes.
Who are the reformers?
From: Leaves of Grass 150th Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics), pg.156
Pogba might naturally be tall, powerful, and rangy, but you can find hundreds more across Europe’s top leagues with those attributes. What marked him apart, even as a kid was his work ethic. “I remember telling the group at training one Monday to juggle the ball 50 times with their right foot, 50 times with their left, and 50 times with their head,” recalled another of his coaches at Roissy, Mamadou Papis Magassa. “Paul couldn’t do it. But he spend the next two days with a football, practicing constantly. He came back Wednesday and did it perfectly.”
8by8 Magazine issue 8, All Eyes on Paul. By Paolo Bandini.
How did Nicki Bandini (then Paolo) scoop this tale of Paul Pogba? Can you picture young Paul in the back garden practicing his juggling?
Even the gifted need to put in the work.
Great is today, and beautiful,
It is good to live in this age….there never was any better.
From: Leaves of Grass 150th Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics), pg.156
No better way to celebrate the last day of October than with Walt Whitman.
If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.
Joan Crawford
Good sentences, enviable sentences even, can be found in places other than books or articles. In his book How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, author and law professor Stanley Fish shares this story:
One nice thing about sentences that display a skill you can only envy is that they can be found anywhere, even when you’re not looking for them. I was driving home listening to NPR and heard a commentator recount a story about the legendary actress Joan Crawford. It seems that she never left the house without being dressed as if she were going to a premiere or a dinner at Sardi’s. An interviewer asked her why. She replied, “If you want to see the girl next door, go next door.”
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, Stanley Fish. Pg 4
Fish breaks it down:
It is the bang-bang swiftness of the short imperative clause-“go next door”- that does the work by taking the commonplace phrase “the girl next door” literally and reminding us that ” next door” is a real place where one should not expect to find glamour (unless of course one is watching Judy Garland singing “The Boy Next Door” in Meet Me in St. Louis).
How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One, Stanley Fish. Pg 4
I had to add this to my online common place book:
“Remember this, son, if you forget everything else. A poet is a musician who can’t sing. Words have to find a man’s mind before they can touch his heart, and some men’s minds are woeful small targets. Music touches their hearts directly no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the man who listens.”
The Name of the Wind. Patrick Rothfuss. pg 106
