MIXING IT WITH ULTRAS MADE A MAN OF IL MURO

It’s freezing – but I’m trying my best.”

- Edd Paul

Kris Thackray is comparing, perhaps unfairly, the chilly north east of England with the balmy climes of southern Italy.

Replicating la dolce vita on the English coast is no mean feat. Italy does that to people. It’s why the Blyth Spartans center-back lives where he does, in Tynemouth, with the cafes, beaches, and bars that remind him of his previous life on the continent.

Not many Non-League footballers can say they’ve lived on the Strait of Messina with a picture-perfect view of Mount Etna outside their window. Not many can say they’ve been threatened by baseball bat-wielding ultras or shared changing rooms with future and former stars of Italian football, either. But this is what makes Thackray’s career unique.

What began as a classic tale of a young talent released by a Premier League club took an unexpected left-turn abroad to Italy: five clubs, four liquidations, numerous run-ins with Ultras, one player of the year award and a cultural relearning of the beautiful game and life itself.

Growing up on Channel 4’s Football Italia, Saturday mornings spent watching fellow Geordie Paul Gascoigne mugging off some of Serie A’s finest in the biancocelesti of Lazio, Thackray was incepted with dreams of Italy – the weather, the food, the stadiums – from an early age.

The shimmering, ethereal quality of calcio whet the appetites of many UK football fans but unlike most, Thackray got to experience the full menu: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

“If I’d eaten pizza with a knife and fork, they’d have kicked me out…”

This isn’t the first and won’t be the last time Thackray talks food with The NLP. Cuisine and calcio go hand in hand after all, as the teenage Thackray learned on his arrival in Italy in 2006.