2024-09-19 19:17:00
OfCARLO BARONI
Full-back for the national team, Eraldo Monzeglio played tennis with the Duce. And then… In Alessandro Fulloni’s book, «The full-back and the Duce» (Solferino) reconstructs the human and sporting story of a footballer very close to the regime
A lifetime ago you always knew where to find full backs. In a precise point between the goalkeeper and the director. They called it “having positional sense.” A gentle way to invite you to stay in your place. Sespecially when it became uncomfortable. On and off the pitch. Eraldo Monzeglio knew how to do it. Question of nature. And of honor. He had a lot and lost little. Above all, he decided never to say anything. More than silence it was respect for those who could no longer defend themselves. And it doesn’t matter that he was on the wrong side. Friends don’t betray each other. Even if having them around stained you forever. Monzeglio never denied his connection with the fascist regime. As well as his convinced (even if critical) support. Faithful to his ideas until the end. Between cultivating legitimate doubts and becoming a turncoat, he preferred the first path. Certainly more tortuous.
The full-back and the Duce (Solferino publisher) dthe journalist of the «Corriere della Sera» Alessandro Fulloni tells the sporting and human story of a footballer who didn’t make himself noticed only on the rectangle of a football pitch. Born in an era where pretending nothing was happening was forbidden. Then a sporting champion also “played” on other terrains. Where it wasn’t enough to be the best.
The history of Monzeglio begins from the end. When the former national team full-back has already stopped playing the ball. Some men come knocking on his door who you might mistake for avengers of the night. The posthumous retaliation of former partisans who settled scores with one, moreover, who had a name. The ideal prey: Eraldo Monzeglio from Vignale Monferrato, born in 1906.
We are in the immediate post-war period and even the children remember that boy who addressed the Duce by first name. He wasn’t alone among the champions. Except that after April 25th the others began to suffer from amnesia even in front of the images that showed them with their arms outstretched in the Roman salute. Eraldo no. He preferred not to explain certain choices. The courage to be afraid also has to do with it. The supporters of the regime were not to be joked about. And he had exposed himself unequivocally. Furthermore, he was the keeper of too many secrets, so many that even the fascists could find it convenient to shut his mouth forever. But whoever was looking for him that evening had no bad intentions. Even if the surnames, Cossutta and Oldrini, left little doubt about their political origins.
The proposal catches him off guard, something unusual for him who didn’t even take the bait from Peppino Meazza. They ask him to coach Pro Sesto. And the perplexity is not so much for the technical level of the team, which still played in Serie B, but for the place of origin. Sesto San Giovanni, on the outskirts of Milan: the Stalingrad of Italy. You know what a pleasure it is for the fans to pick on a black shirt. Someone who had been to Salò and who knows how much he knew about it. After all, even the shirt of his first team, Casale, was in total black. But politics had nothing to do with it. Not to mention that this was a club with a championship in the trophy cabinet. Definitely other times. Eraldo, however, deserved more. He arrives at Bologna that «makes the world tremble». And there they still sewed the shields onto the shirts.
Yes, but the leader? In the Emilian capital Monzeglio he becomes a friend of a regime hierarch, Leandro Arpinati, who will later be ousted. During a holiday in Riccione, in 1928, he met Bruno and Vittorio, Mussolini’s sons. Twelve years old one, ten the other. Imagine a boy who meets his football idol on the shore? While his father is “only” the head of government. Over time, a true friendship is born. Then Eraldo will almost become a second parentmore affable and close than the biological one.
It doesn’t seem true to the two boys that they are being taken seriously by the national team full-back. And what a full-back! Monzeglio raised a Rimet cup in 1934. One, the first, because in 1938 it will do an encore. That triumph of ’34 allows him to meet the leader of fascism. And to be fascinated by it. Perhaps it is more human affinity than unity of political views, but for everyone he will become the Duce’s friend. A pass first, a burden for the rest of life. Intimate enough to give him tennis lessons. Benito seems to have had just one great right and little else. Of course it’s better not to tell him. However, some friendships can always turn out to be good again.
After Bologna comes an offer from Romato. But he hears that Mussolini’s sons wouldn’t like this. They are huge Lazio fans. Eraldo then telephones the capital and asks to speak to the Ministry of the Interior. “He” himself answers him. Benito. Monzeglio points out the dilemma. The Duce calls his sons who reassure him: «Nothing against you playing with the Giallorossi, the important thing is that you come to Rome.” The team played at Testaccio, an English-style wooden stadium, and was preparing to win its first championship, in ’42. Without Monzeglio on the pitch but on the technical staff. In Rome he will help get the license back for a teammate, Fuffo Bernardini, who was about to run over the Duce with his car.
Then he will have the Russian campaign to set an examplea test of excessive loyalty, the escape to Salò, the shooting of Ciano, the rescue of Peruchetti, the Inter goalkeeper who was a partisan in the same brigade as Beppe Fenoglio. Eraldo Monzeglio and the many lives of a champion who had only one word. Alessandro Fulloni accompanies us with lively and well-documented writing through those difficult years and tells without rhetoric the life of an Italian like many others. This is why it is so different.
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Y a football to kick at the end of the war. The repercussions of his choices echo throughout his life, intertwining his athletic success with the moral complexities of his associations. Monzeglio stood at a crossroads, representing an era where sports and politics could no longer be divorced from one another.
Through his journey, we glimpse a man ensnared by the consequences of a time defined by ideological extremes. He wrestled with the burden of his silence and his decisions, which marked him as both a celebrated athlete and a controversial figure belonging to a troubled past. The narrative invites readers to reflect on the multifaceted nature of identity—where glory on the field coexists with the shadows of one’s affiliations and choices. Monzeglio’s life story is a profound chronicling of personal evolution amidst historical turbulence, leaving a legacy that is as complex as it is compelling.