“He remembered my passage through Bologna and, especially, my passage through Napoli,” said Sérgio Clérice, 84, somewhat unpretentiously, at a lunch last Sunday (24), in Araraquara, where he lives in the interior of São Paulo. “Oh, and give me the beans there.”
The former striker told friends the call he had received two days earlier. At the other end of the line was Carlo Ancelotti, 66, who shared with him reminiscences of Italian football of the 70s.
In the effort that the Italian coach has made to familiarize himself with Brazil’s culture, some concepts are easier than others. The idea that a goal with severe goalkeeper is a chicken, for example, has not yet been fully understood.
But there is at least one Brazilian figure that is better known to Ancelotti than by most Brazilians. It is Clérice, one of the great Brazilian scorers in the history of Italy football.
Clérice was already a well -established striker in the country in 1976, when Ancelotti arrived at Parma’s professional team as sock. At that point, the Brazilian was the last remaining foreigner in the Italian Championship – there a ban in 1966, which would last until 1980, but who was already able to stay.
Thus, the paulistano remained 18 years in Italy. He defended seven clubs (Lecco, Bologna, in two passages, Atalanta, Hellas Verona, Fiorentina, Napoli and Lazio) and scored 187 goals before returning to Brazil, becoming coach and then agent.
He had a good time in both functions – he said great clubs, such as Palmeiras and Santos, and participated in striking transfers, such as Evair’s to Atalanta. But it was not from the coach or the businessman that Ancelotti remembered when he received the book “Sérgio Clerice-El Gringo, the elegant villain”, just launched by the publisher A Ball and the Word.
The author, Rodrigo Viana, sent copies to the CBF (Brazilian Football Confederation), one of them with dedication to Ancelotti. The Italian then asked for a telephone call to be arranged with the one who has already been called by Diego Maradona “the number two” of Napoli’s history – there is no need to debate who number one is.
“It’s an outsider,” said Viana, about her biographer, little remembered in Brazil. “I like the term, despite being Americanized. We did not observe, but Ancelotti observed and remembered. These people from the old Italy really remember him.”
For the author, one of the reasons for this erasure is the fact that Clérice did not defend the Brazilian team – or the Italian, although, according to him, there was the possibility. Another is the unbeaten coverage of the Brazilian press on international football, with the limitations of the time in information transit.
Therefore, it is very likely that none of the 24 Brazilian players who will perform to Ancelotti this Monday (1st), in Teresópolis, for the next games of the national teams, never heard of Sérgio Clérice. Their commander knows who he is.
