Lobotka wanders across the playing field like the protagonist in the film who is being made to believe that the GDR is still alive: he was not told that Spalletti’s wall had fallen
Nobody has had the heart to ask Lobotka yet. How are you doing? If you want to talk a little, Stan, we’re here. Because the doubt is that Lobotka still hasn’t understood it. That they preserve it and work around it: a passage every now and then, as they have done in the past, a slow release administration, but that’s about it. Like Ms. Christiane in “Goodbye Lenin,” who was in a coma before the fall of the Berlin Wall and woke up afterward, no one told the key man at Scudetto winners Napoli that the world had changed. The Germans are reunited, the daughter works in a fast food restaurant, the son produces fake news programs for oriental television to keep them reassured and calm in their shattered reality. For Lobotka, Kvara sending Garcia to hell could have been the helicopter that takes away the giant Lenin statue. What happened? Who is this man on the bench dictating substitutions by choosing them from the Binariello? Give me the ball, come on. Trust me, you always had a good time, right? Sleep, Stan. Pssst…
You should ask him, the church in the center of Spalletti’s village of Napoli. More: Cardinal Voiello of the Blue Vatican, the man of weavings, embroidery and weaving. Surveyor, architect and engineer. Now he is a direct eyewitness to the black hole of intrigue that led to Napoli never shooting at Genoa’s goal for 90 minutes. Perhaps at the risk of being insensitive. Challenge That disorientation that you can see on his face every time Ostigard carries the ball and passes it. Oh, Osti, are you leaving?! It is a trauma, it must be denied.
He continues to make the same moves he did in May. A season ago feels like a century ago. He cuts and dictates a passage that no longer belongs to him. The ball moves – more like a spin – in inconsistent paths against the wind. He was a magnet, now the French coach’s game (which one?) is like repelling him. Sometimes it bounces back and forth between departments like a crazy ball in an overturned pinball machine. He conveys the idea of a lonely, wandering man, too shy to seek the help of those who could show him the way home.
Or he gets it, Stan. Like Christiane. Her son tells her about the West Berlin citizens fleeing back east. And what fits the Naples crisis better than an imaginary explosion of Western capitalism? It was too much, this Napoli from Spalletti. It was a wonderful story of a year, a sensational back and forth. Then reality spiraled out of control.
“It takes time to get used to new things. “We play a little differently than the previous coach,” he said the last time they sent him to the press conference. And this now “slightly” takes on the Fantozzian tone of exaggeration. It sounds like “How human are you!” If we could ask Lobotka what he thinks when the team walks around him without looking at him, with the indifference reserved for an ex who doesn’t yet know he’s an ex, perhaps we’d give him the opportunity to vent. Christiane also survives her beloved GDR in the film.