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The Prince of Buenos Aires

Denys E. W. Jones

Sunday, June 19th, 2005

1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 Forty thousand Genoani kicking up a din.
Trying to give their team a lift before the match begins.
Surely we won’t lose tonight, hell no, we’re bound to win.
There’s a Prince from Buenos Aires playing up front.

2 Leave a comment on verse 2 0 The Prince of Buenos Aires, he’s endowed with silky skills.
He ghosts clean past defenders, when he shoots, he shoots to kill.
If he’s on song, and turns it on, he never fails to thrill.
Milito’s got the ball, oh mamma mia!

3 Leave a comment on verse 3 0 Eleven Red and Blue Shirts took the field that warm June night.
Three points were sorely needed to accede to the Top Flight.
But stubborn Serie C-doomed Venice swore that they would fight.
They hadn’t come to Zena for the ride.

4 Leave a comment on verse 4 0 Scarce fourteen minutes on the clock, they showed just what they meant.
Vicente caught us napping, stuck the ball into our net.
But we were not downhearted, nay, we had no cause to fret,
A golden-booted Prince was on the prowl…

5 Leave a comment on verse 5 0 We knew that soon or late he pull one back, set matters right.
We had no doubt he’d got the South End goal fixed in his sights.
And sure enough he sent Marassi buzzing with delight.
He made it level just before the break.

6 Leave a comment on verse 6 0 When Rossi put us two-one up we rubbed our hands with glee.
When Oliveira equalised, we cursed our destinee.
But once again our handsome Prince was there to make it three.
Yes, Diego blazed the trail to Serie A.

7 Leave a comment on verse 7 0 That lad from Argentina, he’s one class goleador.
The type of lethal finisher we’d all been yearning for.
We hope and pray, he’ll don our Shirt for many long years more.
The Prince of Buenos Aires, that’s Amor!

8 Leave a comment on verse 8 0 18/6/05
Denys E. W. Jones

© 19/6/05

Notes

Il Principe di Baires, The Prince of Buenos Aires is Diego Alberto Milito, who scored two of the goals in Genoa’s 3-2 victory over Venezia. He scored twenty-one goals in the season ’04-’05, and in a total of fifty-nine appearances for Genoa he has notched up thirty-three goals, so I think he deserves a poetic homage all to himself.
Venezia were already mathematically relegated to Serie C before the match started. Zena is what the locals sometimes call their city, Genova, just as people from Birmingham call their city Brum. Marassi is of course the Genoa stadium, officially called the Stadio Luigi Ferraris, but often referred to as Marassi, because that is the area of the city in which it is located.

Source: http://footballpoets.org/poems/the-prince-of-buenos-aires/