Riccardo Calafiori, aura redefined
Milkshakes and meteors maketh the man.
If you’re ever curious what it feels like to be struck by a meteor, ask Joachim Andersen. Watch the 16th minute of his appearance against Arsenal at Craven Cottage last month and you’ll see a blue streak hurtling towards him from deep space. That’s the left-back, and he’s made a striker’s run from the void on Andersen’s inside. God only knows what the fuck he was doing there but now the Dane's right-back is dragged towards him, pulled into the meteor’s orbit, and the defensive line becomes much too thin and compact and suddenly there’s a huge gap down Fulham’s right: the ball reaches Leandro Trossard who knocks it down for the striker-who-is-not-a-striker, and the resulting shot is an outrageously cultured first-time effort that curls away from the keeper. It would’ve been one-nil, if the striker was actually a striker, and had curved his run to stay onside. But then perhaps the moment wouldn’t have happened at all, because it was generated by the sheer absurdity of a left-back making that run in the first place. Breaking modern football means breaking the rules.
The world was introduced to Riccardo Calafiori because he decided to knock Croatia out of EURO 2024. The Bologna defender was building a quiet Serie A prestige under Thiago Motta as a renegade who’d go waltzing off into midfield whenever the feeling took him (a little-known Arsenal writer by the name of ‘Chilli Sharpener’ described him to me as "John Stones on amphetamines") and in the summer became the partner for Alessandro Bastoni in the heart of the Azurri defense. He went viral about eight separate times before that night, before he burst through a tiring midfield as poor Luka Modrić watched on, chewing his shirt in anxiety; Italy were seconds away from being eliminated, Croatia a handful of clearances from progressing. Calafiori drove towards the box and white shirts flooded towards him and he knew that meant Mattia Zaccagni was in space on on the left, so he popped the ball out to him at the last possible second, and Italy went through.
Calafiori is an enigma, a nutcase, a walking contradiction. He’s totally bizarre, a stately defender of that glorious Italian heritage who looks a bit like he walked out of Galleria Del Accademia but plays like he was introduced to football last night via a highlights compilation and decided to wake up this morning and give it a go. He’s as likely to blast a shot out of the stadium as he is beat Ederson from thirty yards or drop a quarterback pass to Eberechi Eze’s feet so perfectly the ball is in the net within two touches. Modern football is increasingly about nerds (you’re reading SCOUTED, this includes you) and numbers and the endless pursuit of understanding, and now the game is patterned and disciplined and quantified, all static lines and mid-blocks and clever, orchestrated movements, players circling each other like planets around a sun, held in eternal shape by the laws of physics and hairdryers. Calafiori is a pattern breaker. He is the small ball of burning mass hurtling from deep space with enough force to knock a planet - or Joachim Andersen - out of alignment.
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