Ask me who was "El Pampa" Sosa

The best moments of love are those of a quiet and sweet melancholy, where you cry and do not know why and almost resign yourself to a misfortune and you do not know which one. But the most important thing of all is to find it love, that great love that everyone dreams, that love so strong as to shrink the universe and keep it in a heartbeat. Who, who could ever be so sensitive and feel so strong as to try to throw them beyond the boundaries traced to the edges of the infinite? I found it, my love is 189 cm tall and everyone calls it "El Pampa".

Roberto Carlos Sosa was born in Santa Rosa in the Argentine pampas during one of the darkest moments in the history of the South American nation. The context is that of the coup d'état of March 24, 1976, which dismissed the democratically elected government of María Estela Martínez de Perón. That military dictatorship governed Argentina until 1983 and was characterized by a strong repression against the opposition and innumerable violations of human rights. Jorge Rafael Videla was the president who for a long time governed at that time that among other things saw the birth of the phenomenon of the Desaparecidos: people arrested for political reasons or simply accused of "anti-governmental" activities that lost track disappearing into thin air . Between 1976 and 1983, under the regime of the military junta, up to 30,000 dissidents or suspects of these were claimed to have totaled 40,000 victims. The political situation has not influenced Sosa's career, but one thing is certain, it has a characteristic influence on all Argentineans born and raised during that period and therefore also on him. He gave them the strength to not give up, to fight and never stop thinking that something good would come one day, gave him optimism.

Calcistically El Pampa began his career in the youth academy of Gimnasia La Plata, a team in which he debuted at twenty years, in 1995. 37 goals in 83 games, booty thanks to which draws some attention on himself and in 1998 arrives in Italy , to Udinese. First season of 11 goals and qualification for the Uefa Cup, remains in Friuli until 2002 but its impact becomes less and less decisive and the Pampa is sent back to Argentina, to Boca. Bad, indeed very bad. 7 matches and 0 goals. Back to Gimnasia but even here things still do not turn. In 2003 the second and decisive landing in Italy, first Ascoli then Messina.

But here my story stops being a biography, and it becomes a fantastic and romantic story. Where the protagonist / hero wears the most beautiful cloak of all, is blue and behind has the number of the football, the 10. Yes, because the pampa was the last Napoli's player to wear, the heaviest shirt, the one that leads with it a magic, an aura of immortality that no other football shirt possesses. (To be exact the last to wear it in the absolute sense was Mariano Bogliacino but today we sing another story, we will forgive the good Mariano). With SSC Napoli, playing with 10 is not just playing with 10 but it's playing WITH 10! 189 cm of aggressiveness, which have only one target, to score and get lost in a race without brakes under a curved curve. However, the context is not that of big stages, no. The theater is the C series, because the Pampa was the first purchase of the Naples labeled De Laurentiis after the bankruptcy. I talked about optimism before, yes because how can you not be optimistic and get involved in the C series in a newly rebuilt team where the football balls are also missing.

Yes, because it is said that at the time at the training center in Naples Castelvolturno lacked the Football balls with which to train and that Sosa bought them from his own pocket. I want to believe it, because even if it were not true, who am I to ruin a wonderful story with the truth. Frédéric Beigbeder wrote a book in 1997 called "Love lasts three years" and explains how a precise time exists in which love is born, grows and is consumed, and if you are not able to to make it "other", to transform it, has its days counted. The love story between Napoli and Roberto "El Pampa" Sosa lasted 4 years, then a year longer than the theory exhibited by Beigbeder but the sentiment has never stopped and indeed became intimate, visceral but above all mutual bond. Naples will always love his last "true" number 10, will love forever the one who after a lob against Frosinone who finishes his parable behind the goalkeeper, takes off his shirt runs under the curve showing the shirt he wore under that of Napoli then burst into a cry of joy that remains indelible in the memory of all the blue fans. The shirt said: "Those who love do not forget, honor those who wrote the history of Napoli" obviously dedicated to those who made it ten became la diez and became the symbol and first knight of Naples, Diego Armando Maradona. Just that match was the last played by Pampa with the number 10 shirt of Napoli at the San Paolo. "Destiny, you realize that there is when you look back, never when you look ahead".

We are Neapolitans, Pampa, let's not forget who loved us. We'll never do it. Thank you.