GQ Italia 2001年9月號
刊載一套皮耶羅2001夏天在邁阿密度假的照片，攝影師是Gianni Giansanti，部分圖有收在他的寫真集。
這也是一套很有歷史的照片了，P9的泳池吃肉照讓我很熟悉，這個姿勢和構圖不是我平常拿貓零食小肉條逗貓的樣子嗎.......拼了一張對比圖
順便附上當時GQ的專訪
Alessandro Del Piero as you have never seen before
DEL PIERO RETURNS FEELING LIGHT
The vacations in America. The championship which begins. The expectations for the World Cup and the will to reveal himself with really special pictures. Alessandro tells GQ how to live the brink of a decisive year. And he tells his secret: a new serenity.
Between Del Piero and the writer there is a difference of three zeros on the pay check, some millions of fans, the ball touch and several hundreds of other meaningless things.
But the ID says we were both born in 1974, with a few weeks of difference. This way, when I meet him in the garden of a hotel, in Val d'Aosta, sitting opposite to a wall to avoid the midday sun, with the sideburns just trimmed and looking pointy, almost like when he terrified goalkeepers (and the lovers of low profile hairdos), I have, right in front of my eyes, the strange experience of someone my age so far and so close; and I ask him something that anyone who is almost thirty ask himself.
Alessandro, for your 30th birthday there is a football eternity (three seasons) left, but this is just a flash in a person's life. It is usually the time when someone ask himself if he has chosen the right woman, the right job. Is it very different for a player?
"For a footballer, being 30 represents the career peak. The strongest players have definitely become the best between the 27 and 31 years of age, it is said this is the best age from the physical point of view, you get the most of experience, you know how to read the situation and how to focus. So, maybe I live this period a bit differently from those who are not football players. But it is an intense period for me as it is to anyone who is 27, even when it comes to making oneself a topic for discussion: it is the right time in one's life to do so, and to make a turnaround".
To discuss oneself is unusual in football. Once, in last year's dark months, he told Repubblica: "I believe I am lucky to be playing, still after the injury. So-so, but I am playing". Now, there are not many players who admit they are playing so-so. And there are not many who, after having missed two goals in an European championship final, tell journalists: it is my fault we lost. I ask myself if he would do the same nowadays.
Didn't you regret having made a discussion around yourself too often, too publicly? "Many have considered this a problem. But I think it's a simple thing. For me, scoring a nice goal and enjoying it is as normal as saying: shit, I missed two goals. Or admitting that I am not in shape. Or saying that, if I am not at my best, it is better than someone else plays. The thing is, there is not always honesty in the opinions, and around certain things you say there is a big fuss, which makes no sense. I don't regret anything, but the experiences teach you lessons. And from now on, I will surely not let anything inside annoy me".
I TELL YOU WHO WINS THE CHAMPIONSHIP
He smiles. He does not admit it, but his responsibilities this season only get more and more important. Captain of a Juve in which now it is up to him to provide spectacle (without Zidane) and goals (without Inzaghi). And it is the year which precedes the World Cup. This way, we start talking about football.
Do you share Roma's decidion of changing practically nothing?
"They did very well: they are strong in all positions, so why changing?"
Has Lazio become weaker?
"I have had this feeling, because they have sold important players. However, the club has also bought players who might not be as famous as those who left, but who satisfy their needs".
Milan: will Inzaghi pass the ball to Shevchenko more often, or vice versa?
"That is what everybody asks. But they have a great attacking potential and Rui Costa will solve the problems".
If Juve does not win the Scudetto, who does?
"It seems to me that there is a series of coincidences which favour Milan: Lazio and Roma have recently won and it is hard to repeat it, Inter have quality but it is not a fact that they will find the right balance. Then, there is Milan, that really have a lot of enthusiasm".
THOSE SUCH DIFFERENT PICTURES
He smiles again, and we go back to speaking about the age of 27. I ask him what does he envy and what does he not envy on a "regular" 27-year-old like me.
"That you went with 72.000 other people to the U2 concert, and I could not go. Stuff like that. But I do not envy anything because I have the most important thing, which is working on something I like, that makes me satisfied, that, among other things, allows me to earn some good money and makes my life easier. I can only feel for the affections that are gone, but which are compensated by new affections".
But, are you satisfied by the image people have from you?
"The press has divulged the image I wanted, which is only a part of the true Del Piero. I have always wanted to separate my work from my private life".
Until the pictures that Gianni Giansanti took and which GQ publishes exclusively on these pages.
"I am used to seeing myself as a footballer: however, it is almost as if I had taken these pictures myself, since I felt very comfortable while they were being taken, this summer in America. I think it is the first step from being totally closed, as I was before, to becoming a bit more relaxed. I can do it every once in a while".
I will read a few adjectives that have been used to describe you, and you tell me if they belong to you. Stubborn.
"Yes".
Serious.
"Very much".
Introvert and solitary.
"Yes".
Available.
"I hope so".
Sad?
"No, I think it is just seriousness and an excess of introversion. The press write about that they know: the player, not the man. True, I have been a sad player. It happens, if you always win in the beginning of your carreer and then at a stroke you get injured, you lose two scudetti on the last matchday and an European championship that way. I am in love with this job, so it is inevitable that the sadnesses I get from it are seen in my private life. But it happens because I am very transparent".
The last adjective, which I believe may have more meanings: heavy. Being physically light was your strong point.
"It is not a problem, because I look to the future. I am sure that, by the end of this year, nobody will say this anymore".
And mentally? You said yourself that you have missed lightness. Have you found it, and how?
"It took me some time, so many things have happened in my normal life, not only in my football life. You use all the means you have, until one day you find it, the lightness, and possibly you find out someone else gave it to you, in the strangest, cruellest way it can be".
A SPECIAL POWER
The background rumour that follows this interview is his father's passing. It has not been mentioned, for politeness, but it comes out everytime the subject is not football. Among so many colleagues who play with the lightness of futility (Ale, I ask him, are you the only Italian footballer who has not dated any "Letterina" from Passaparola? He laughs and reminds me that it is not a great compliment for the "Letterine"), he seems to look for the lightness of painfulness. And if it is true (Calvino wrote it) that melancholy is sadness, only lighter, Ale may have never stopped being light. The trequartista's new lightness comes from the heaviest thing there is: the passing of someone dear. Five days after his father's death (it was the 18th of February), he went back to the field and scored a beautiful and strange goal: he will say that he did not remember practically anything from that play, almost as if he went into a trance. But now he tells why the most of heaviness can sublimate to the most of the lightness, and why this will be the year of Del Piero: "I like to think that, for some time, I have something extra coming from the outside, a special power. And besides the things we usually say, this is the only thing that matters now. It is a power that gives me incredible serenity and tranquility in moments that it does not usually happen. I have a heavier weight over my shoulders, but I don't feel it so much".
Emanuele Farneti
