'Love's Young Dream'



I met my first wife Antonella at a semi-professional player's dance in 1951. I'll never forget that moment when I first laid eyes upon her - this delicate, beautiful, shy young girl. She briefly glanced in my direction as I was drunkenly waving my penis in the punch bowl. I was intrigued by her: her looks, her innocence, her shy manner and mysterious smile, then I looked down and saw her ample bosom and knew then and there that I must have her. It took many months of careful wooing, apparently I had made a bad first impression upon her, but slowly and surely I began to win her over. In Argentina at the time it was customary to ask the Father's permission before asking out a young lady. So one night I finally plucked up my courage and asked. "Pedro, you toothless old bastard" I cried across the bar "I want to get my hands upon your daughter's udders!".  Later that evening we came to an arrangement, for the modest price of 40 pesos and a donkey, Antonella would be my wife.

Our marriage was marked by up's and down's, highs and lows - her parents never truly took to me, I later suspected her Father was unhappy with the donkey I'd given him, but we were blessed with 7 lovely children. As a football man it will long be my regret that I devoted more time to the game I loved than the woman and children that I also loved (not Franco, I wash my hands of that little shit) but there you go. The game is a cruel mistress, always calling you away from those precious family moments. Over time it caused tension between us, whenever she and the kids needed me, invariably I was away on football business. I missed her fat bitch sister's wedding because I was away on international duty (I wasn't too sorry), I missed our first born's arrival because I was bribing a referee and I missed her mother's funeral because the stadium collapsed on me and I was left in a coma - it all adds up. I later learnt that Antonella harboured bitterness and anger towards my devotion to football. I was also fucking plenty of whores in the early years of our marriage, and in the later years I was going through my drug paranoia and violent psychotic episodes. Those small grievances aside I thought we had a happy marriage, it was only after 'Nella's first suicide attempt that I realised something was wrong between us. I bought her a donkey but it didn't help. Little things began to annoy both of us, she found out about my drug-fuelled orgy after the Miss South America Pageant in '74, I complained bitterly about her donkey shitting on the living room carpet. Something had to break, the things that first attracted us to each other were no longer there, she claimed I'd changed, become colder and harder, whilst I suggested a boob job (her, not me) as after 7 children frankly they were almost dragging behind her as she walked. Eventually we seperated. I took the house and the children, as is customary in Argentina, and let her keep the donkey.

'My Drugs Hell/Heaven'

...It was then that I travelled to Europe for the first time, on football business, I was to meet the chairman of Lazio. A good man, and a good fascist. I liked him immediately and came to love the City of Rome and the fanbase, particularly the Ultra's. Crazy fuckers those Italians, my kind of people. Whilst I was there I also made contact with a friend of mine from back home who was working with the local Mafia importing cocaine. It might have been my over-indulgence in the Bolivian marching powder that led to some of my more controversial decisions whilst head coach there, although my cocaine contacts also kept me well in with rival-team Napoli's star player, and my main transfer target: Diego Maradona, who was then in his curly permed pomp (perm-wise, drug abuse-wise and in the football sense). We had some crazy nights, the kind of nights I genuinely wish I could remember.

My drug abuse by this stage had spiralled to the point where it eventually took me three years of therapy in the mid-90's before I even recalled being manager of Lazio, or indeed having ever visited Italy. It was only when my therapist showed me some footage of me berating journalists in the press conference before a game with Fiorentina and some other, more-incriminating footage of me with a prominent Italian hooker that I could even recall a moment of my time spent in Rome. It took me many months to remember the football stuff, and then only vaguely, but I definitely recalled the hooker - you don't forget an ass like that! She later went on to political success during the Berlesconi era, before dropping out of politics to concentrate on a criminal trail and eventually, a jail sentence. I'd like to tell you something about the tactics I used whilst at Lazio, but I fear that may take another prolonged spell in deep-hypnosis Freudian therapy before I'm able to drag it from my drug-addled subconscious. Everything I've read about the period tells me I was a great success at Lazio, although I don't always trust the press reports as I know all too well my own habit of bribing journalist's for positive coverage by filming them covertly in compromising positions with prostitutes and on occasion, farmyard animals.

It was a crazy time the 1980's, Phil Collins was making us all dance again with his string of excellent pop singles, Thatcher and Reagan were in the middle of their blossoming friendship and torrid love-affair and I was a football manager, and also off my tits. The phrase "off my tits" is used a bit too often for my liking these days, but back then I really was off my tits. Seriously, if my tits were located in India then I'd crossed the Pakistani border & was living it up in Afghanistan, heading haphazardly towards the Iraq border, the location of my own tits the last thing on my mind. Genuinely, I was seriously off my fucking tits. That's the thing about drugs and me, I love them and go off my tits on them whenever I can.