Stop Talking, Totti: Or, When You’ve Been an Idiot, Just Shut Up About It Already!

By: Martha | February 26th, 2007

Get back to that floppy disc and shut up! I’m not one of those people who hates Francesco Totti because he’s beautiful (you know who you are), or can’t stand his ~~diving~~ calculated winning of free kicks, or despises him for his failure to shine for the Azzurri. I actually have tremendous respect for the man and quite like watching him play. All of that said, Totti made a complete ass of himself yesterday.

First, he misses a penalty, then has a weird confrontation with Andrea Campagnolo, the Reggina keeper, and finally does a typical Totti flip-out shortly thereafter, getting himself a card. After the game, he engaged in more macho posturing with Campagnolo, and felt no shame in telling the press it all stemmed from a personal penalty challenge with the keeper, a friend and Roma youth product. According to Totti, “I thought I’d con him, as he was basically pushing me to send it to the left and I would stick to the right, but he ended up conning me instead.” Uh … ok.

Is it just me, or is it best not to admit that sort of thing out loud, particularly when you can’t convert a penalty to save your life? I’d say maybe you A)avoid turning spot-kicks into personal games with friends, and B)when you fail point A, don’t tell anyone. I mean, yeah, Roma were up 2-0 when the miss happened, but I can’t imagine Totti’s teammates would take this little episode quite so well had they lost because of it.

Righteous indignation aside, however, the best thing to come out of this story is the discovery that Google Translate thinks the Italian word for “penalty spot” (dischetto) means “floppy disc.” As a result, the La Gazetta dello Sport article on the incident says things like “Andrea Campagnolo, porter of the Reggina, adorns the shooting from the floppy disk, therefore the two discuss animatamente,” and “I always go on the floppy disk with the tranquility.” And that, I think, is good advice for all of us.