AS Roma and Oregon Ducks: The highest anticipated seasons of my lifetime

It’s Ferragosta in Italy, that time in mid-August when half the country leaves for the sea or mountains, leaving the cities to tourists and one American expat to wonder how awful his year is going to end.

My transition from sports writer to sports fan enters its 14th season Monday when my AS Roma hosts Fiorentina. My Oregon Ducks host Boise State Sept. 5.

My fedora with the yellowed press card in the brim is buried deep in the closet. I only bring it out for rare freelance assignments or appearances at Olympic Stadium.

I no longer wonder what questions I would ask near the end of games. I just order another beer or a pizza. As a fan of Roma and Oregon, I have more pressing issues than post-game interviews.

Like mending a broken heart.

Being a fan of Roma soccer and Oregon football has more highs and lows than the Giro d’Italia. I was blessed with watching Roma beat Barcelona 3-0 to make the 2018 Champions League semifinals and win the inaugural Conference League title in 2022.

But I also have gone 13 seasons without a Serie A title, stretching Roma’s skid to 25, and seen it lose 7-1 to Bayern Munich and 6-1 to Barcelona in the Champions League.

I’ve watched Oregon become a national college football power only to collapse like a drunk frat rat in the last two national playoffs.

I now relate to all those rabid, faceless sports fans I wrote to for 40 years. Watching Roma or Oregon win adds extra zip in my step. The pizza tastes better. The beer seems colder. The sun feels warmer. Hope, however small, comes into my life. I spend the day marveling at the brighter big picture.

I wear my red and yellow Roma jerseys and exchange “Forza Roma!” with every Romanista who sees them.

Then Oregon crashes and burns and Roma’s season crawls along with middling results and another managerial change. It’s another Roma season of disappointment when I’m merely hoping to avoid the purgatory of a mid-table finish.

This season, however, seems different. I don’t remember ever being more optimistic about the only two teams in the world to which I’d give two centesimi.

Roma is back in the Champions League for the first time in eight seasons and has a shot at winning its fourth Serie A title and first since 2001. Some learned pundits are picking Oregon to win its first national title, and it was ranked second in Monday’s preseason poll.

I have only one problem. Some people believe their glass is half full; others see it as half empty. 

I see cobwebs in mine. 

This could be the greatest sports season in my life (I turn 71 in March, about the time I’ll know if Roma is a contender or pretender) or a heartbreak equalling all the women who’ve dumped me.

I am very thankful I live two blocks from a hospital.

Here are observations of my two sports loves, one in my backyard, the other in my background.

A.S. Roma 

The biggest adjustment American sports fans have when they adopt a soccer team in Europe is the hierarchy here is completely different than in the United States. U.S. sports leagues have salary caps and drafts. Even small market teams can compete for titles if they draft and develop well.

In European soccer, the hierarchy is as rigid as the caste system in 19th century India. The rich stay rich; the poor stay poor. The rich win trophies; the poor get relegated.

European fans accept it. They know no other system. Little Monza knows it has a better chance to host a future Olympics than win a trophy this season. But if it beats Juventus or one of the Milan teams, the fans’ season is made. They feast until the off season when they return to Serie B.

Since I began following Roma in 2001-02, it has been in Serie A’s second tier. It rarely threatens for the title. Its season goal seems soldered into finishing in the top three or four for the next season’s Champions League but usually tailspins into hanging on for the lesser Europa League or Conference League qualification.

I retired to Rome in January 2014 and since then we have finished second three times, third three times, fifth twice, sixth four times and seventh once. Last season was the first time we’ve finished higher than fifth in eight years.

In 13 seasons, we’ve had 10 managers.

But the current manager is why 60,000 fans fill Olympic Stadium every game and why I am seeing my glass slowly fill with my beloved Barolo wine. 

Gian Piero Gasperini is one of the best managers in Europe. In 10 seasons he took little Atalanta to the Champions League five times. He came to Rome for a change of scenery last year and immediately took us to third place and the Champions League.

At 68 with a striking resemblance to actor Leslie Nielsen (when he was alive, Lazio fans), “Gasp” has become worthy of a statue next to Julius Caesar and Marcus Aurelius. Put Gasperini on a marble horse outside the stadium. Why not? He already has a wall mural of him dressed like Harry Potter as a wizard stirring a cauldron of hope with the words GRINTA CUORE SUDORE (GRIT SWEAT HEART).

Sure, they had murals of legendary manager Jose Mourinho when he arrived in 2021. But Gasparini doesn’t have a reputation for alienating locker rooms or has an ego bigger than St. Peter’s.

We’re coming off a strong finish last season when we went unbeaten in our last seven games, winning six. The midseason pick up of Dutchman Donyell Malen from Aston Villa was the best transfer window signing in my retirement as he scored 14 goals to finish as Roma’s top scorer in only 18 games.

We still have Mile Svilar, Serie A’s two-time Goalkeeper of the Year, who gave up the second fewest goals in the league (31) last season.

Gasperini has been yelling all year about getting another goal scorer. Injury-prone Paolo Dybala, a hero of Argentina’s 2022 World Cup title team, is our star playmaker but has the shelf life of romaine lettuce.

Roma just signed Rodrigo Mora, 19, who scored 16 goals over the last two seasons as an attacking midfielder for Porto. They’re close to signing Malick Fofana, 21, of Lyon who has scored 17 goals in 80 games.

My red and yellow wardrobe awaits.

Oregon Ducks

While Roma won a Serie A title the year before I moved to Rome the first time in 2001, I have never seen Oregon win a national football title. Neither has anyone else. Ever. Oregon has never won it all and it began playing in 1894 before Rome ever had a soccer team.

During much of these 133 years, my hometown Ducks have played more like plucked mallards. Rubber duckies floating in bathtubs offered more resistance, In my four years of college there from 1974-78, Oregon went 12-32. Our Autzen Stadium was a concrete pillbox that held only 22,500 people.

Our mascot was Donald Duck, for God’s sake.

As a student reporter in 1975, I covered a 5-0 loss to itty-bitty San Jose State in a driving rainstorm after which university president William Boyd said, “I’d rather be whipped in a public square than sit through a game like that.” In 1983 Oregon tied Oregon Straight, er, Oregon State, our arch-rival, 0-0.

Alan Malamud’s tag line in his Los Angeles Herald-Examiner’s notes column a week later read, “Any score from Eugene yet?”

So it’s surreal to see my Oregon become one of the half dozen or so best football programs in the country. Autzen has expanded to 54,000 seats and it’s known as one of the most intimidating crowds in the sport.

Roma has my heart but Oregon has my soul. I grew up with this team. My entire family went to Oregon except for one wayward sister, who, in what can only be described as a four-year death spiral into insanity, attended Oregon Straight.

I tailgated with my parents, who had season tickets. I still remember the fudge-nut brownies my mom’s friend always brought and the gin and tonics my dad and his friends drank in the rain.

But over the years my soul  lost its way. I began covering sports in high school. I started covering Oregon my sophomore year in college and watched a lot of losses my next three years. I then launched a 40-year sportswriting career in which the winner had no more bearing on my life than what I wore covering the game.

Sportswriting kills subjectivity. I remember covering Oregon’s national title loss to Auburn at the end of the 2010 season. It wasn’t until I returned to my hotel room in Phoenix when I realized, “Holy shit! Oregon just played for the national title!”

Now it’s different. Retired in Rome, I have no more chance to cover an Oregon football game than I do Kazakhstan’s parliament. My soul has returned, like the devil brought it back in exchange for a journalism career.

I’m up until 5 a.m. watching Duck games on my laptop. I text friends in Oregon during timeouts. One of only three sports columnists I read in the U.S. is John Canzano who writes the Substack blog Bald Faced Truth out of Portland, Ore. 

This year’s Ducks are special. This is the most loaded team in school history. Their lone question mark is their post-season pratfalls. Two seasons ago Ohio State drilled us, 41-21, in the national quarterfinals. Then last season, Indiana sodomized us in the semifinals, 56-21, three months after beating us 30-20 in Autzen.

According to some preseason prognosticators, Oregon has the country’s best roster, the most experienced roster, the best defensive line, the best tight end and a Heisman Trophy candidate at quarterback. It has no apparent weakness. Just a couple of small question marks.

Tailback Jordan Davison, our returning leading rusher, injured his knee last week and coaches are denying he’ll be out six-eight weeks as originally reported. We are replacing our offensive and defensive coordinators. The jury remains out on them.

But barring another pandemic, we’ll make the 12-team playoff. If we get our postseason mojo right, we’ll make that national title game Jan. 25 in Las Vegas. 

Where we can get skull fucked by Indiana again.