"Imprison sports directors, the referee in the locker room, listened to referees and players, sold championships. It's enough to want to keep their football. The sick, the sid, not us. People should turn off the TV and watch our games to come, for ours is the true football: the dust, the mud, with the doors completely torn nets. And above all, the desire to be together. A healthy, well most, football, even therapeutic. For me, football has saved my life. In the truest sine of the word. "
Carlo Strappaghetti, captain of Gabbiano, Italian master of the game series for the mentally disabled

" Matti per il calcio "(" Mad About Soccer "and" Crazy for Football ", the beautiful word game unfortunately has no German counterpart) is the title of a documentary by the Italian state television RAI of Wolfango de Biasi and Francesco Trento over gaming operation of the teams for people with mental illnesses. In 1978, in Italy the Basaglia law adopted (Law 180/78), which is the usual way by then Perren abolishing of mentally disabled people, and paved a way to allow mentally ill people to a participation in the "normal" everyday life. To as "freedmen" devoted themselves to countless initiatives that allow the sick, according to their capabilities, realize their talents and regain their human dignity.

"The madness is a human peculiarity. The confusion exists within us as well as reason. The problem is that the society in order to be able to actually call it healthy, the madman would accept the same as the reason. Instead, it uses a science, psychiatry, the madman to translate into a disease with the aim to eradicate this. Here the closed institutions have their purpose. "
(Franco Basaglia)

In the film, "Matti per il calcio" RAI accompanied the team, "Il Gabbiano" from a poor neighborhood in the north of Rome by the 2003/04 season. Not at all from above, players are introduced to the fc, small singleplayer illuminate their history and their disease - then not so unusual - everyday problems. Twice a week you train on the hard court of Polisportiva Bufalotta both space and locker rooms as have certainly seen better days. But that disturbs the "crazy" just as the hundreds of thousands of amateur footballer, whose mental deviation not yet been diagnosed. Driven by the wonderfully infectious enthusiasm of the players, one begins to "Gabbiani" the thumb to press. Just like everyone else, they argue with the referee or throw themselves into the mud with joy when the winning goal in stoppage time is acclaimed. Of course there is a moment of silence, because his mother died of the striker in the night and of course have ran with trainers and therapists, if the team does not get together 7 players, because some times it goes back a little worse. As the major players in the Serie A is one of the defender to his shirt, who has once again fouled too often and rarely like to Serie A after the end of the match with a handshake done everything again.

Matti per il calcio - the best goals

And demonstrated in spite of all and also true "normality", one begins to understand in the brief interview sequences, which means the Football for these nice people really: the chance to return alive to participate, to experience a few hours of normalcy that they otherwise of the company is denied. As if they were not already enough problems with itself alone would have - from the outside without disabilities. At least for the duration of the game they do not have to bother with their disease, not to deal with prejudice and sympathy. On the dusty (or muddy, depending) rectangle, the laws of the game: The team wins only when all together and keep each within its means everything is. The Round Square and who needs to shoot more goals wins. This requires no Einstein, but people who are willing to go to their limits. And they do so with a joy and an enthusiasm that is truly contagious. Here in the square not count their weaknesses but their strengths - at last a field where they can fill up confidence in the truest sense of the word.

Matti per il calcio - the trailer

And they can play football. Beginning with the brawny striker Mario, schizophrenics, 43 years with a footballing past in Achillea. His precise legal shot, he has not forgotten how. Nothing in the world Mario would give up a game of "Gabbiani", and since he plays in the team, he never once had to go back into the "Closed". Or take Benedetto, 41, doctor of psychology, scion of a wealthy family. Earlier in his career he always had someone to pick up, pack up his bag and convince him to participate in the training. Today "Il Gabbiano" is a fixture in his life, he is at every practice is the first and grabbed his bag onto most accurate. By himself or Valerio, the goalkeeper Valerio has a drug and alcohol history, which dramatically increased his schizophrenia. Since he is part of the team, he has returned to life. Today he works in his parents' hair salon, and a girlfriend.

Matti per il calcio - for "dribbling a parte"

Of course, participation in team sports has a therapeutic significance: first, the players have the opportunity to measure themselves against real opponents and race to define themselves against it, instead of 24 hours a day to deal with imaginary, fictitious adversaries. But the most important on this film is that it lets the viewer participate without pointing the finger at the everyday life: silly jokes in the shower, boisterous chants after a victory, desert referee abuse and superstitious rituals before the game. You get to know the players as people, people that are not defined by their illness, but whose disease is part of their personality. Or like the coaches and therapist puts it: "It's not about that I accept them with their difficulties, it is important that they have accepted me into their game in my otherness as part of the team."

It's completely insane to describe the excesses of modern football than normal and the boys of Gabbiani as "crazy." They are crazy about football, otherwise you forget to end the documentation again and again that it is about some seriously ill people. This fact plays no role. And in terms of self-mockery, the hard-paid professional football can sometimes cut like a slice: the interviews are in fact several meters deeper and funnier than what you get offered in the sports scene Sun