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Tifoso di Calcio

Soccer is a universal language. Whether it be football or サッカー or il calcio, the passion of the sport is felt across the globe, in the international heart, by young and old. It does not matter where you are or how far removed you have become from home, once you are a soccer fan, you are in it for life.

No one proved that more to me than my grandfather.

The most vibrant memories I have of him and his home next door always involve the roars of soccer fans permeating their house. My grandfather’s hearing, like many in their old age, was not what it used to be and the floor-model TV was turned up so one could hear it in the back bedroom. No one touched the TV while il càuciu was on. It did not matter how bored you were of counting all the remnants of Catholicism in the house (Which I had found, later in life, to be around 100, when counted individually), soccer had precedence over all.

For Eugene Cacciola, soccer was one of the few connections he had left to his pride and his country. For all his love of the United States and the opportunities it had given his children, no one’s home can truly leave their heart and the blessing of the DISH network’s ITALIA station (Whose number was something ingrained in my memory for many years, as the sole person designated to changing the station back for my grandparents when anyone had fiddled with the television, whether I was in their house or summoned there via phonecall) was something well at best and were in constant need of my mother as a translator for any trips out of the house.

When it came to my grandfather, whose television was decorated with no less than 2 soccer figurines, one of the greatest values was in that of the art of the ball. Even in childhood, when the importance of the giocatori di calcio on each squadra ‘s skill and their allenatore’s reactions to rigori made no more sense in my native tongue of English than it did in the fast language of an Italian commentator, I knew the intensity in my grandfather’s eyes as he chattered in his slow, Sicilian dialect to the television that this was a part of his essence. I didn't need to know the game itself to know that this sport, in all its banality in the mind of a five year-old, was a part of his heart. I knew inherently that I had no business getting between a man and his heart.

These were the little things I understood about my grandfather through our language barrier. The majority of my family, even those younger than me, knew at least a sentence or two in our native tongue. My older brothers, though American-born as I was, could rattle off paragraphs in an enviable fashion. I knew one phrase, zuccuru di nonno, which meant ‘Grandfather’s Sugar’, or as my grandmother half-translated with each utterance he made of it, ‘Sugar di nonno’. It was of the utmost importance I understood it, in her eyes. It was her way of translating the vastness of his love to me.

But I never needed words to understand, to what extent a small child could, my grandfather. He was a bent over man with little hair and age spots smattering the dark complexion of his almost-bare head and a round belly from a life of rich foods. He walked with six feet, held up by a steel walker than clattered on the yellow and brown carpet in a rhythm with his pained groans as he hobbled his way slowly down the hallway. His calloused fingers were always slightly curled as he motioned slowly while ‘talking with his hands’ as he spoke to my mother. He was shrunk with age and the hunch of a man who’d had one too many joint replacements.

My mother has told me, “Grandma would say ‘He used to be a tall, strong man whose presence commanded respect. Look at what he’s become,’” but in the eyes of a child, who never knew that tall man whose welding tools now all held rust and whose broad shoulders now slumped with the feebleness of age, his respectability blossomed from my understanding of his heart.

I understood his sophistication in the way he sang in soft, harsh tones alongside masters of opera as he listened to arias played through the television. His work ethic came through in his dedication to his garden despite his age. His gentleness blossomed in his affectionate mumblings as he laid bits of bread crust he couldn’t chew down for his pet cockatiel to nibble on. And his pride and masculinity were understood through his love of the great game of soccer.

The language of soccer can be translated into almost any tongue world over. The sport blankets the earth in a sense of unified understanding. But, love needs no translation. Even without words, the love between two people can be understood. Love can be seen in the smile, heard in the strings of guitars and tasted in the spices of a mother’s meal.

My grandfather died long before I could have learned to answer back. Even in his absence, the essence of his love exists. In my heart, his love rings on in the echoes of his voice beaming ‘zuccuru di nonno’ and the cheers of fans coming through in stereo through the speakers of the television.