Brief interviews with the Soccer Gods: The god of cynical fouls

I met the god of cynical fouls, Paolo Hercolani, at his museum. He has a museum. Or rather, he calls it a museum, but it’s more of a charnel house, a macabre display of the fractured bones, torn tendons, and other disfigured body parts that litter the entire building. Each body part is labeled with the name of the footballer that it once belonged to:

EDUARDO DA SILVA: Fractured Tibia and Fibula. - Martin Taylor

ALF-INGE HAALAND: Knee Ligaments. - Roy Keane*

STUART HOLDEN: Fractured left eye socket. - Group Effort

We sat at a table in the back. As I prepared for the interview, Hercolani disappeared down a maze of hallways before returning with two cups of tea. He took a few sips then, struck by sudden excitement, pointed to a display behind me.

“That’s my favorite one right there! Van Basten’s ankle. It’s really incredible. It wasn’t just one tackle that did it, but a long-running effort by so many different players that forced one of the best players in history to retire at 28. Imagine what he could have been ....” He went silent for a few seconds, his eyes looking beyond me, fixed on the bone. Then they met mine again and he grinned from ear to ear. “Guess we can only imagine.”

Zito: Who is your favorite player right now?

Hercolani: Well, it used to be Oscar but I don’t watch much of the Chinese League. So, David Silva.

Zito: Silva?

Hercolani: Right? But I mean, he’s just a little bastard isn’t he? Such a dirty player. I love him.

Zito: That’s fair. Alright —

Hercolani: [interrupts] Wait! What am I saying? It’s Sergio Ramos. That beautiful man, created in my own image. I guess even gods can sometimes take such excellence for granted.

Zito: What do you make of the notion that tackles are being taken out of the game?

Hercolani: Standard English hyperbole. They’ve been crying about that for years. Look, I’m obviously not a big fan of the softer rules, but players just have to be more sly with their fouls. Maybe an elbow during a corner or stepping on a forward’s ankle when the referee is turned away. You have to pick your spots. My personal advice is to managers is to show every defensive player tapes of Marco Van Bommel.

Zito: You don’t sound like you’re a fan of the English.

Hercolani: It’s just always something with them. How can you complain about tackles and cynicism being taken out the game when we saw what Germany did to Messi in the World Cup? It’s just sensationalism. I’m still here, I still exist.

Zito: Is this a case of man creating god rather than you making Ramos in your image?

Hercolani: What do you mean?

Zito: Well, you said that you still exist as proof that tackles were still in the game. Does that mean that you only exist when people believe in you, or that you’re responsible for the birth of people like Ramos, and it doesn’t really matter who believes in you or not?

Hercolani: I don’t know, I’m a god, not God. Some days I wake up and feel very much alive and other days I feel like I’m fading away. I don’t think that’s because some people don’t believe in me anymore. I’m sure that’s part of the pain of being.

Zito: I was thinking of Gaiman in American Gods: “‘It doesn’t matter that you didn’t believe in us,’ said Mr. Ibis. ‘We believed in you.’”

Hercolani: And I’m thinking more of Camus: “Physical suffering is sometimes humiliating, but the suffering of being cannot be, it is life.”

Zito: Who’s your favorite author?

Hercolani: I think that’s an obvious one. Homer.

Zito: Anyone more contemporary?

Hercolani: I’m an old-school guy. I like the classics. But I do enjoying reading tweets. They’re their own form of literature.

Zito: Soccer Twitter?

Hercolani: Of course! There’s so much art there. The best for me is when people argue whether fouls were deserving of cards or not. It makes my heart happy.

Zito: Mane on Ederson?

Hercolani: Come on, that’s not a red card at all. There was no malice intended [laughs].

Zito: Pogba on Bellerin?

Hercolani: You know, I didn’t really care that much because Bellerin deserved it for that hair.

Zito: You don’t like the man-bun?

Hercolani: This isn’t feudal Japan. All the money in the world and he decides to look like Tesshin Kurou.

Zito: That’s fair enough. Alright, last question. Favorite team?

Hercolani: Arsenal.

Zito: Wait, Arsenal? I expected Atletico Madrid, or one of the smaller Italian teams.

Hercolani: Yeah. Everyone does. But there’s always some masochism behind sadism. Hurt people hurt people.