FOOTBALL CULTURE. SERIE A.
Serie A Operazione Nostalgia: A Glorious Time Warp To Calcio’s Glory Days
“He may not be Brazilian, but he only scores crackers. Keep your Fenomeno, we’ve got Sheva.”
The chant is little more than background noise at first, but it soon gathers a life of its own and grows louder and louder.
Andriy Shevchenko waves obligingly towards the crowd, then waits for the referee’s whistle by the centre circle. A picture of composure, the trademark number 7 shirt on his back.
On the far side, meanwhile, Javier Zanetti delivers a final word of encouragement to his teammates and takes his place on the right flank, as he had done 615 times in Serie A.
“Keep your Fenomeno, we’ve got Sheva.”
You have seen it all before. The San Siro, floodlights on, Shevchenko and Zanetti on opposing sides. AC Milan vs Inter Milan. Red and black. Black and blue. Smoke billowing up from each end of the majestic old ground.
Except that this is not the San Siro and the only smoke comes from a solitary burger van doing a roaring trade underneath one of the curvas.
More significantly, Milan and Inter kits are well represented in the crowd. But so are Roma, Parma and Fiorentina. And Torino, Reggina and Brescia. And just about every other club on the peninsula.
Tucked away on the border between Piedmont and Lombardy, Novara’s biggest claim to fame is being stuck halfway between Turin and Milan – cities that, to borrow from Jose Mourinho, ooze football heritage.
But thanks to the incredible work of Serie A: Operazione Nostalgia, there’s football heritage everywhere you look at the Stadio Silvio Piola today.
The brainchild of Andrea Bini, Operazione Nostalgia started out as a Facebook page back in 2014 to allow Serie A fans to discuss their 1990s cult heroes.
Over the past decade, the movement has grown into a pop culture phenomenon in Italy and boasts over one million followers on Facebook and 180,000 followers on Instagram.
Operazione Nostalgia’s meteoric rise convinced Bini he could get a number of former Serie A stars back together for the event and, incredibly, he has pulled it off.
In 2015, just over 500 fans attended the first gathering in Milan’s Piazza San Babila, with attendance rising to 4,000 in just two years.
By 2018, Operazione Nostalgia swapped squares for stadiums, with Parma’s Stadio Tardini hosting the event’s first legends game.
From Francesco Totti to Hernan Crespo, Alessandro Del Piero and Edgar Davids, over 150 former Serie A stars have taken part in the event over the years.
The extravaganza in Novara is Operazione Nostalgia’s second meeting this year after the gathering at Salerno’s Stadio Arechi in June and pulls in a 12,000-strong crowd, some of whom have travelled from as far as Rome and Sicily to attend.
Vintage kits, vintage players
Walking through the car park outside the Piola from early afternoon is like walking through a Panini stickers album from any year between 1985 and 2006. This is peak Serie A, a splendid, colourful time warp.
That Fiorentina produced by Fila and sponsored by Nintendo? Check. Milan’s 1989 long-sleeve top that immediately conjures memories of Marco Van Basten, Frank Rijkaard and Ruud Gullit? Ask and you shall receive.
The same goes for that splendid Parma number donned by Hristo Stoichkov, or a Roma shirt that immediately makes you think of Totti in his pomp, curling a daisy-cutter past Gianluigi Buffon to seal the Scudetto in 2001.
Queue for a beer and it’s an Inter 1998 blue and grey hoops kit standing next to Juventus’ blue-and-yellow away shirt from the mid-1990s. Ronaldo dribbling past Luca Marchegiani en route to UEFA Cup glory or Zinedine Zidane making Europe his playground? Hard to choose.
Looking at the names on some of the shirts is an equally mesmerising experience. A veritable who’s who of Serie A royalty including Batistuta, Vialli, Del Piero, Savicevic, Vieri, Veron and Crespo to name but a few.
But also an array of absolute cult heroes. Players who seldom lifted a trophy, but won the hearts and minds of the fans.
Di Natale, Chevanton, Maniero. And then Stroppa, O’Neill and Vryzas.
There is even a stand where fans can play Pro Evolution Soccer on a first-generation PlayStation. A virtual glimpse at Master League heroes Espinas, Castolo and Ximenes is enough to leave one-misty eyed.
As for the heroes on the pitch, they too stir emotions as they did during their playing days. In some ways, even more than they did. Distance, after all, makes the heart grow fonder.
“My favourite football period for Serie A between the 1990s and 2000s, when it was the best league in the world, far better than the Premier League and La Liga,” says David, a Reggina fan wearing an Emiliano Bonazzoli top.
“I grew up with those players and I want to see them another time.”
Nostalgia for football as a whole, not just Serie A
This, however, is not just an exercise in romanticism. Speaking to the attendees, one gets the feeling that the longing for Serie A’s heydays is almost as intense as the nostalgia for the role football played in society’s fabric.
“I absolutely love the event, and the camaraderie it brings together,” explains Alex, donning a Baggio 1994 World Cup top.
“But I have to be honest, football is no longer what it was. The players aren’t what they used to be, the emotions around football aren’t what they used to be”.
Sporting a Brescia kit from Baggio’s last season, Andrea agrees: “I grew up watching these players live and it’s an absolute privilege to see them again. It’s great to see so many old kits, it’s a reminder of what football used to be.
“These days, football is increasingly difficult to like, because the sense of community has all but disappeared. It’s changed so much, the quality of the players and the way the fans are treated.
“I’m 40 and I remember when going to watch football was about the social aspect of it, the feeling of togetherness and of spending time with your mates. There’s a big and sad generational gap between how we and those younger than us see football.
“The will to stay together, the culture, the respect – most of it is all gone.”
In all of this, the Premier League plays a curious role. More than arguably any other league in the world, English football’s top-flight has accelerated football’s shift into a TV show worth billions of pounds, traditions and fans swiftly sacrificed to the altar of broadcasting rights.
A financial behemoth, the Premier League has long dethroned Serie A as the best league in the world and yet remains incredibly popular even among the nostalgia enthusiasts.
Search for them long enough and you can find fans wearing West Ham kits with Di Canio on the back and Chelsea shirts carrying Gianfranco Zola and Gianluca Vialli’s names, along with the odd Manchester United vintage number.
Then there are kids wearing the latest Manchester City and Liverpool tops, Erling Haaland and Mohamed Salah now as popular as if they played for Inter Milan or Juventus.
Back on the pitch, Shevchenko and Zanetti, captains on the day, are joined by an illustrious cast in Novara.
The hairs have got greyer, some of the shirts have got tighter and almost all the legs have become a fraction slower and refuse to obey their brains, but their technique remains as exquisite as ever.
Antonio Di Natale looks to bend one into the top corner past Sebastien Frey with all the confidence of a man who scored 209 Serie A goals, while Giorgos Karagounis remains the same willing runner with an eye for a pass who inspired Greece to Euro 2004 glory.
Diego Milito produces the kind of impudent chip finish that reminds you why he was one of the heroes of Inter Milan’s historic Triplete, Christian Panucci marshals the back four with aplomb and Diego Fuser rolls back the years with a thunderous finish.
A Roberto Baggio pilgrimage
And then there’s him. The man who everyone wants to see and cherish. Roberto Baggio, the Divine Ponytail himself. Arguably the biggest Serie A icon of them all.
Even a legends game is too much for the Divine Ponytail’s battered knees, but his appearance in Novara is particularly significant coming less than a month after he was left injured in an armed robbery at his home in Veneto.
And speaking with fans outside the Piola, one gets the feeling this is a pilgrimage for some of them.
‘Baggio is Calcio’, Riccardo, a football shirt collector sporting a Carlos Valderrama top from Italia ‘90, succinctly tells me when asked what made him so special. The feeling is echoed by hundreds if not thousands of fans outside the Piola.
Nobody embodies the feeling of nostalgia more than Baggio, whose retirement 20 years ago marked the end of the age of innocence in Serie A, the last vestige of football as an art swept away by the inexorable rise of football as a ruthless business.
Nostalgia, of course, isn’t exclusive to Italy. Think of the bucket hats and England ‘90 and ‘96 that have become ubiquitous anywhere from your local pub during the Euros to Glastonbury.
Think of Liam Gallagher selling out Knebworth last summer and touring to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Definitely Maybe.
Cool Britannia’s glorious renaissance has elicited criticism in some quarters and flirting with the past can be a dangerous game.
Time, as Bruce Springsteen eloquently put it, “slips away and leaves you with nothing, but boring stories of glory days”
Here in Novara, however, nostalgia isn’t concealed, but embraced. After all, it’s the event’s self-confessed raison d’etre.
Football Italia is alive and kicking in 2024, and if the past looks better through rose-tinted glasses, so be it. Objectivity be damned.
As Baggio himself observed: “Football must be about emotions, but football can also be about nostalgia.”
To see more, watch Baggio The Pilgrimage on the Destination Calcio YouTube channel:
