Play Soccer With Mozart

Soccer legend Giovanni Trapattoni, big player back in the 1950s-1960s and still a successful coach (he's now coaching the Irish national team) is also a big classical music fan:

Republic of Ireland manager Giovanni Trapattoni has urged his Irish players to open their minds to the music of Mozart – because the cadences of the great composer’s works can help bring about a greater understanding of the intricacies of football!
...

Trapattoni told the Irish Daily Mail: “A man who understands Mozart can also play better football. Mozart teaches you about tension, tempo, rhythm, structure. In his music you can learn the logic to read a game.

“For me in any case, that was a big experience. I believe that through music I grew as a player and a man.

“Young players no longer have the patience for a symphony, which takes an hour and which one must hear several times to understand.

The image of your average soccer star blasting Sinfonia Concertante on their iPod, or bopping to the finale of Beethoven's Ninth after a big win is indeed an endearing, if impossible, dream.

Comments

[Giorgia]

Footballers (sorry, what you call "soccer" we call "football".) are as thick as mud, I'd be surprised if any of them followed Trap's suggestion.
Ruggers are better at that - for instance Denis Dallan is studying classical singing (alas, he's a tenor...): http://operabouffe.wordpress.com/2008/05/20/denis-dallan/

[inter mezzo]

they're cheeky monkeys at the Irish Daily Mail, pretending they spoke to Trapattoni themselves! They pinched those quotes from a much longer interview he gave in German to Axel Brüggemann of the Frankfurter Allgemeine earlier in the week.

Trapattoni told FAZ he has 2000 CDs. He started collecting LPs as a player (like 50 yrs ago) to fill in spare time during training. He used to play the horn, but had to stop when he became a footballer. When he lived in Milan, he went to La Scala. And he was a friend of Pavarotti (!) He wishes footballers could be more like an orchestra, everyone knowing their place in the team, and deplores the egoism of today's players.

There's loads more - it's a really interesting read for anyone who understands German. Trapattoni seems so much more intelligent and thoughtful than the typical football coach.

The full German interview is here:
http://www.faz.net/s/Rub4D7EDEFA6BB3438E85981C05ED63D788/Doc~E693DA214DB2743E88D8A5F2CD08F76B1~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

[Susan]

I love you, Opera Chic, because you post pictures of soccer players with orange cones on their heads and it's actually related to music.

[violainvilnius]

....though not one Mozart symphony lasts an hour....

[Siris]

Thank you, OC dear. And thank you, inter_mezzo. Now i know Trap is perhaps more sophisticated than that nervous old man we seen on TV when he last coached the Azzurri!

Re: Pav - he was a big Juve fan and Trap had his best coaching yrs at La Signora Vecchia. Little surprise they're friends!