Harbinger Of Glory

Rome at that hour belonged to the bakers and the delivery drivers and the elderly men who had been waking before the sun for so long they’d forgotten they had a choice.

Shop shutters were still closed, café owners were setting out chairs, and the smell of fresh bread was just finding its way onto the streets.

Here and there, the city’s earliest regulars moved through their routines without hurry, until a different sound drifted across the quiet.

It started as a distant tremor before growing into something impossible to ignore.

People looked up from newspapers, paused outside bakeries or turned from bus stops as a long line of men ran through the streets.

A woman on the second floor of a building on Via Lungo heard it and moved to the window and looked down and then looked again.

Because what was moving through the street below her was a group of men in blue training tops, the embroidery on the chest catching each eye as they passed.

And she knew that embroidery the way every Italian knows it when you grow up in a country where football is one of the languages.

It didn’t take long before people began reaching for their phones, the wonder vanishing as quickly as it’d come.

Windows slid open, and through them, a few residents stepped out onto balconies, while others lingered in their doorways just long enough to catch the group passing below.

By the time the runners had turned the next corner, they were already disappearing from the street, leaving only the fading rhythm of their footsteps behind.

A little farther up the road, Spalletti kept pace in a golf cart crawling alongside the route.

Seated with one arm resting against the side, he let his eyes move quietly from player to player, studying their body language as much as their running.

So far, the decision to bring them out into the city had given him exactly what he’d hoped for.

A sort of stage, to keep the average person in the loop that their national team was still striving to get back to the peak of their powers, and he knew it wasn’t going to end at just Rome.

Sixteen kilometres through the streets of Rome had stretched the group out more than anyone cared to admit.

With about two kilometres left, Spalletti climbed down from the golf cart and shut the door behind him.

A few heads turned as he joined the route on foot, settling into a jog alongside the players.

”Last stretch,” he called. ”Let’s see what you’ve got.”

A sharp whistle cut through the morning, and immediately, the pace of the squad lifted.

Leo leaned forward and lengthened his stride, smoothly rather than explosively, while the pack broke apart around him.

The quickest runners drifted to the front, others settling into a pace they could still hold.

Beside him, Carlo stayed level for a few seconds before easing back, and somewhere over his shoulder he could hear the laboured breathing of players trying not to lose contact.

Coverciano came into view at the end of the road, and Leo crossed through the gates among the first group, his legs finally beginning to feel the distance as he stepped onto the training pitch.

He slowed to a jog, then a walk, before dropping onto the front row of the bleachers and drawing in a long breath.

Around thirty seconds later, the rest of the squad arrived in various states, the gate producing a steady stream of players who had given the last stretch everything they had.

Quickly enough, the pitch filled with men lying down, hands on knees and some just flat out sprawling against the grass.

Spalletti came through the gate and got back onto the cart, which had somehow preceded him, and stepped off again on the other side of the pitch.

After that, he walked among his players with his hands behind his back like a man on a pleasant morning stroll.

”Good,” he said, to the general state of them while looking around the group.

”If we could, I’d let us do this every day, but since we can’t, I have set it back to just once every three days,” he said.

”For the rest of camp.”

For the first time since the start of the camp, the players groaned at the coach’s statement, and Spalletti laughed, genuinely, as he’d been expecting just that.

”You’ll thank me later,” he said, and turned and walked away while his players addressed the pitch with their faces.

Away from the confines of the Italian football centre, the media houses in Rome had a productive morning to say the least.

The clips and pictures that had come through the early hours from residents along the run route were good content, and everyone or at least the media houses, knew it.

By the time the city had fully woken up, the photos and videos from the morning run had already found their way onto football websites across the country.

Spalletti’s Italy Starts Running: The New Era Begins in Rome.

Sixteen Kilometres Before Breakfast: Inside the Azzurri’s First Official Morning Under Spalletti.

New Faces, New Standards: Italy’s Next Generation Reports for Duty.

The last article led with Carlo.

His photograph filled most of the page, beneath a headline that read:

From Inter Wonderkid to European Champion: Carlo Regutti Begins Again With Italy Senior Team.

It wasn’t difficult to understand why.

Italian football had followed his name long before Manchester City came calling with a fee that turned one of Inter’s brightest academy prospects into one of the country’s most talked-about teenagers a few years ago.

He’d been interrupted in his first season, but the previous season had reminded everyone why the excitement had existed in the first place, since Carlo had finished it as a European champion, playing his part in Manchester City’s first Champions League triumph.

In the locker room, Udogie found the article and held his phone toward Carlo.

”They got your good side,” he said as Carlo looked at the picture and then looked at Udogie.

”My good side is my right,” he said. ”That’s my left.”

Udogie looked at the picture again before shrugging.

Leo, sitting on a chair across from them with his boots already on, looked at both of them and shook his head.

”Can we go now?” he said as he stood up and joined the stream of players moving toward the door.

The two watched him go before they quickly followed, not wanting to be the first to face the brunt of Spalletti’s sarcasm.