Who ate all the pies?; Angelo Peruzzi does not have a perfect

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Sep 24, 2000 | by Gabriele Marcotti

The most expensive goalkeeper in the history of football looks more like a truck driver who has spent a little too much time at the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet.

Whatever produced Angelo Peruzzi, whether you believe it's God, Mother Nature or simple genetics, had a very distinct sense of humour.

It gave him stellar reflexes and an innate sense of position, albeit packed into the body of a fat man.

Not a big man; not a Neville Southall for example, powerfully built and ballooning out of control after the age of 30.

No, Peruzzi is a fat man, a guy who has been fighting his own personal battle with the bathroom scales since he was ten years old.

"He used to hide food in his room," says Francesco Statuto, who came up through Roma's youth system with Peruzzi. "You'd open a drawer and find sand-wiches, salami, candy bars, anything and everything. He eats everything, all the time. Some athletes can eat as much as they like and not gain an ounce. Not Angelo. His body was constantly expanding and contracting."

Officially, he is 5ft 11in and 14st, but many believe he is closer to 15st. That is not the body of a goalkeeper. That is the body of a loosehead prop or a shotputter.

The fact Peruzzi still managed to become one of the best goalkeepers in the world is a testament to his natural gifts and his cast-iron determination to overcome nature's practical joke.

His record is outstanding. Still just 30 years old, he has won some 30 Italian caps, despite being part of a generation of goalkeepers which includes the likes of Gianluca Pagliuca, Gigi Buffon and Francesco Toldo. That total would have been higher if he hadn't pulled a hamstring just before France 98, when he was the Azzurri's number one choice between the sticks.

He has won three Italian titles, an Italian Cup, a Uefa Cup, a European Super Cup, a World Club Champion-ship and a Champions League. All this while struggling with a major weight problem.

Two summers ago he moved from Juventus to Inter Milan for #10 million. Last July, he shattered his own transfer record when he joined Lazio for #11m. People believe in him, they have an almost limitless faith in his ability.

Last year's Italian champions saw him as the missing link in their star-studded squad. While the signings of Argentine strike pair Hernan Crespo and Claudio Lopez (for a combined #55m) drew all the headlines, many felt that Peruzzi was actually the key.

After all, Lazio had plenty of world-class attacking options, even without Crespo and Lopez (Fabrizio Rava-nelli, Marcelo Salas, Simone Inzaghi). Peruzzi, however, gave them something they didn't enjoy: one of the few legitimate goalkeeping superstars around.

"A top goalkeeper is worth an additional five to 10 points in a season," Italy manager Giovanni Trapattoni likes to say. "And a goalkeeper who is in form in a cup run can win trophies almost single- handedly."

That's why Peruzzi is now at Lazio. And it's the same thinking Sir Alex Ferguson employed in signing Fabien Barthez for #7.8m.

Standing between the posts, Peruzzi is a monolith, an Ayers Rock which suddenly sets flight, defying both the laws of physics and the constraints of his own physique.

Nobody that size should be able to move so well. It simply doesn't make sense.

But Peruzzi does, and, sometimes, his agility proves to be his undoing. He is injury prone, mainly because when he takes flight the extra stones he carries around accentuate every impact.

That's why he missed the World Cup and that's why, in 13 years as a professional, he has never been ever-present in a single season.

Even now, he is shrugging off an injury, working hard to be fit for Wednesday's Champions League showdown with Arsenal at Highbury.

Every August, despite a rigorous off-season training regime, he shows up at training camp a stone overweight. The doctors simply don't know what to do with him. He's not lazy, they say, he just can't stop eating and his metabolism retains everything.

If he could only lose a stone, they insist, he would cut down drastically on his injuries. Peruzzi has heard all this before.

In 1991 he turned to diet pills for relief. His goalkeeping coach at Roma had just called him lard-butt in front of his team-mates.

Twenty-one years old, embarrassed and on the verge of tears, he drove to a pharmacy and stocked up. It almost cost him his career.

He took a popular appetite suppressant called Lipopill, not knowing it contained Phentermine, a banned substance. He tested positive and was sidelined for 12 months.

It was the darkest moment of his career. In some ways it would have been less embarrassing if he had taken Phentermine for its performance-enhancing properties. The fact that he took it to lose weight, the idea that he was a fat man trying to be slim, was all the more painful.

"I was an idiot," he said. "I had not accepted the fact that different people are born with different bodies. I was made to feel that because I was a professional athlete, I had to look like one. Now I know better. The only benchmark is your performance on the pitch, not what you look like with your shirt off."