The Italians

In their roles as coach and assistant coach, Gianluca Zambrotta and Simone Barone, who represent the best of a generation of Azzurri, share their invaluable experience with the players of Delhi Dynamos.

- Tanmoy Mookherjee

It’s not difficult to spot a sporting superstar from a distance. Their faces are everywhere: plastered across bill-boards, on magazine covers, posters and on television, constantly reminding you who they are and what they look like. Not the least when they are on training grounds, their own turf. And it is certainly not difficult to spot Gianluca Zambrotta from a distance, even if you can’t see his face. The for-mer Italy international is an accidental candidate for an athlete who excelled despite a medical condition. Zambrotta’s bow legs and knock knees are the stuff of legend and a subject of great debate on the internet, so pronounced that they easily give him away.

The Delhi Dynamos’ players are listening intently to the instructions Zambrotta might have coming their way as he lets his displeasure be known with a classic Italian shrug. He is the second Italian coach in the Indian Super League (ISL) besides his former Italy teammate, Chennaiyin FC’s Marco Materazzi. Surely there must be a rivalry between the professionals, but Zambrotta doesn’t let you think so. “I don’t see Materazzi as a competitor, or that I have any special, underlying competition with him being Italian,” he told Sports Illustrated India.

The Dynamos squad is undergoing a rigorous training session under the idyllic winter sun. The quiet surroundings of the Delhi University grounds are an ideal place to train, away from peering eyes, and they can concentrate on the job at hand. It is just a couple of days after being handed a 4–3 defeat by FC Pune City in a game they should have won.