synopsis
The adventure of 23 soccer players from South America that arrived in Italy a few months before the Argentinean financial crack. They came dreaming success in the same country of their ancestors and having as trainer the great Argentinean champion Mario Kempes. A film about dreams that moves existences. A document on hidden aspects of the football world. A suffered event of return emigration.
the story
Summer 2001. Twenty-three young Argentinean and Uruguayan soccer players arrived in Italy: they will join a small soccer club team, the “U. S. Fiorenzuola”, without no problem of nationality because they have all Italian passport. “The innovative project that have a literary appeal, like an Osvaldo Soriano’s tale,” says proudly the manager Alessandro Aleotti. He himself designed and organized together with the Argentinean company Global Sporting Football what would be an smart and profitable soccer business. As couch they called Mr. Mario Kempes, 1978 FIFA World Cup champion. With the exception of Maradona, nobody shines brighter than Mario Kempes in the Argentinean football. In the final against Holland Kempes scored two of his side's goals. He also became famous to refuse to handshake the dictator’s hands when the Cup was conferred. It is a great opportunity to 20 young South Americans that left behind their families, their clubs, their certainties convinced to start a bright carrier in the C2 Italian tournament. The film follows, almost in real time the fading of this episode, capturing in the testimonials of the responsible managers, athletic trainers, people of Fiorenzuola, Kempes himself and above all the day by day of the young players. Among promises and hopes, enthusiasm and ambiguity, dangerous omissions and extenuating waiting revealing a bizarre facet of the soccer “made in Italy” but also the romantic aspect that bring a group of boys overseas following the dream of their lives to play in the land of their ancestors. A document on soccer, on certain aspects that in a stadium tribune is very difficult to observe. A document on return emigration, on the circularity of the history, on human beings that generations through generations carry on crossing the Atlantic in search of a better life. Soccer stories. Migrations stories. Human stories. Stories of dreams, sometimes deceiving, but so necessary to carrying on playing and believe that one day everything could be different.
