Ciao Francesco: A letter from America

You might not know this but in the early 90s, Serie A was the only football league on public television in New Jersey.

While I was a bit too young to understand who you were, and ignorant of my heritage, I was given the number 10 shirt on all the teams I played for as a kid.

Every time RAI chose the Roma game on Sunday afternoon, it was like opening a gift on Christmas morning. I knew I would get the chance to see this special player – you – and be able to watch in awe of your awesome goals and back-heel flicks, lion-like hair and that certain bit of attitude that reminded the other team that it was you who was in charge.

I was captivated.

My name is Wayne Girard. I am a 27-year-old, third generation Italian-American, and Roma is my world.

By the time I was 11, I was a full-fledged fan of you and your club.

Being of Italian-American descent, and raised solely by my mother, you were an ideal role model – a male figure that showed me how to be a champion.

It is emotional for me to write that, but I hope you can understand what watching you meant to me – it was your career but it was my entire life.

As a teenager I followed your every move as a player and remember the anxiety when Real Madrid and Chelsea tried to take you away.

But, you stayed – you always stayed – even after there was a merry-go-round of coaches in 2005, and a couple of seasons later when you won the Golden Boot Award.

When the team came to challenge Liverpool at Giants Stadium in 2004, my mom took me and bought me your shirt for the game.

Even though we lost, and Liverpool fans had encircled us for the entire match, it was an amazing day that brought you from being a superhero figure on TV to a real life athlete in the flesh.

Just two years later, your shirt played such a role in my faith and belief that ‘everything happens for a reason’.

It was April 2006 and in the middle of my high school football career, I was involved in a serious car accident, when someone threw a garden stone through the backseat window.

Before going out that night, I had put on your shirt just before me and my friends went to the mall to hang out. Afterwards, we planned to visit my friend who had broken his leg on a skateboard just a week before.

The random act of violence put me in the intensive care unit for three days – with a skull and sinus fracture.

I was blessed to be alive.

My family stayed right by my side when I was in the hospital and when I gained sense of things, I asked to see something – your shirt. I couldn’t believe it, and although it seems superficial, I remember my joy at seeing the number 10 unscathed.

I only wore the shirt one more time after this. When you visited in 2012, I went to Roma’s practice in New Jersey. Although it was so hot that day, you took the time to have a picture and sign shirts for those who waited.

You even signed the number one, and in my shaky Italian, I said, “Thank you captain, this is my dream.”

Your smile and recognition meant the world to me as I held back my tears.

To be honest, I felt dizzy.

It’s been just over a decade since the night that knocked some sense into me.

Every time I move the shirt around in my closet, I’m reminded about the moments that made me proud to be a Romanista – the way that you carried us on your back through the highs and lows of each season – just as we go through the highs and lows of life.

Some of these plays replay in my mind - like one’s favorite album. Your first goal in the comeback against Messina in 2005, the stunning outside-footed strike against Sampdoria in November 2006, the tying chip-goal against Manchester City in 2014, your superhuman double in the Derby della Capitale - and the greatest selfie of all time that followed - and that’s just naming a few.

Sunday is going to be unimaginable, seeing you wear the shirt one last time.

I’ll be in Manhattan, watching with fellow Romanisti. I hope the consolation of being with others will help me to cope. I fear the silence, the absence of joy on our faces, the fact that there will be nothing to say to each other that will make us feel any better.

I hope that writing this letter to you will give me some closure to the fact that I won’t be able to see you in Giallorosso anymore. But I know that what you did for me will echo in the future, where I teach my kids on what a true champion is – our number 10, our Bandiera, our Bimbo d’Oro, our Ottavo Re di Roma.

There was Romulus, there was Caesar, and there is you, Totti.

Sempre nel core.

Wayne Girard