Malago's Odyssey can be viewed on TMax

No need for IMAX: this footballing odyssey of the Italian national team, which is keeping everyone on the edge of their seats during an already gruelling summer, can be watched on all screens – large, small and on mobile phones – as Malagò intended. It’s all rather strange, even for those who aren’t experts on the subject: the truly Homeric journey to Spain to speak with Guardiola, then the Russian bookmakers portrayed as mythological monsters, and finally the slow ‘nòstos’ back home.  

Amidst all this, it remains unclear whether Malagò is Ulysses, or whether it is rather Maldini and Leonardo with their misadventures up and down the Mediterranean, but the deity who seems to be more successful than the others is Aniene, the demigod invented by Corrado Guzzanti; a Roman demigod with a quiff, a Thor in a Smart car, in a ‘Finte bionde’ style (forget IMAX: here it’s all about the Tmax, the maxi-scooter beloved in North Rome, complete with a Nolan helmet – oh well). ‘Aniene’ is, of course, also the name of the club, of which Mancini and Ranieri are members – the former as manager and the latter as technical director of the Italian national team – and who are due to be presented today.

And so, Malagò again. He doesn’t have a beard as long as Nolan’s Ulysses, played by Matt Damon: he’s more like Zeus, in a blazer, complete with long, snow-white hair befitting a deity, as intended in a Hollywood standalone film set on the (Long) Tiber.  And if Ranieri ‘is on his way from Calabria’, as Malagò-Zeus said yesterday – a remark that would fit perfectly in a Vanzina-style Odyssey – Malagò-Zeus has, in the meantime, eliminated all the Milanese suitors at large: the various Maldinis, Leonardos, Marottas and Pirlos. And whether it’s down to the Russians, the summer, the heat, or the lotus-eaters, one is almost tempted to think that he – the Zeus of circulars – has done all this simply to impose his own choice, the original and eternal candidate: Mancini. Weaving and unfurling his web (on the banks of the Tiber). If Nolan filmed "The Odyssey" with Matt Damon and a budget of hundreds of millions, the FIGC has managed it with fewer special effects and plenty of press releases; but here too, a leader crosses the Mediterranean, consults oracles, meets kings, returns home and ultimately discovers that Ithaca had always been a members-only club.

And whilst Nolan sends Ulysses to Sicily, Malagò sends emissaries to Barcelona (and Mancini returns from Calabria). Guardiola, like the Sirens (not the ones in the official cars that are always whizzing along the Tiber embankments), is hardly ever seen; you can only reach him after a long journey, and even then he just tells you ‘no’. Then, at a certain point, this footballing Odyssey even veers off towards Russia, as if Homer had suddenly inserted a chapter written by John Le Carré. And a great whirlpool emerges, drawing everything in, and that is none other than the Aniene: whether it be the Jubilee, the Olympics, the national team, the government or the sub-government, candidacies or RAI surveillance, they are all its children and tributaries.

After all, a few weeks ago Mancini himself – yes, ‘Mancio’ – was spotted at All’Aniene. At a book launch. Not for "The Odyssey", but for an Italian novel of slightly lesser stature. Book launches at All’Aniene are a fundamental ritual – forget hunting or archery in Ithaca. Among the members hosting the events, there are always senior consultants from Gemelli Hospital, and the generally elderly audience is sunk into huge Chesterfield sofas (perhaps a sadistic detail: in summer, those huge Chesterfield sofas go all limp and suck you in even more; then the elderly need someone to pull them up, like a winch). ‘Giovanni’ always pops his head round at these presentations to say hello; that time he hadn’t, and yet he was there—so they swore—whilst the avid readers (the Aniene version of avid readers) noticed Mancio instead, sneaking between the aforementioned sucking Chesterfield armchairs. An omen? Had it all already been decided? In the changing rooms? Perhaps not; just a coincidence. After all, Mancini – ‘Mancio’ – is a member of the club, just like Ranieri, just like everyone else, just like anyone who is someone – or rather, who would like to be someone – in Rome. An inclusive pantheon: nothing is thrown away – avid readers, weak managers, senior consultants at Gemelli Hospital.

Here, Giovanni-Zeus still reigns, after the snow-capped Cyclopean mountains of the Cortina Olympics and the Greek-Trojan pavilions of the CONI, in Building H of the Foro Italico, where he no longer has his imperial office, having stepped down as president. We went there on a pilgrimage, and there were photos hanging of the deities of this koiné: Mattarella, Totti and the Circeo promontory. But Malagò does not turn coaches into pigs; if anything, he takes on the Pontina (more perilous than the lands of the Lotophagi) with the prancing horse of his Ferraris (forget the Trojan horse). His faithful Labradors are not called Argo but Avana, Frison and Mou, and his motorboat Itama takes him to Ponza, if not to Scylla or Charybdis. His Olympus, the Aniene Club, is a business enterprise, with over 200 employees, and suitors wishing to join must pay thirty thousand euros a year and be approved by existing members. Zeus-Malagò once had a wife with the name of a Trojan princess, Polyxena, the daughter of Priam and Hecuba; he now has a new partner, the vivacious lawyer Elena Vaccarella, whose brother is married to another woman with white arms, (Maria) Elena Boschi. Just to illustrate the cross-cutting nature of this circular Olympus, where one always returns to Rome, even after long, very long odysseys, in an iMax or a Tmax – oh well.