Ready, set, hut: Milan’s got tackle football, cheerleaders, the whole nine yards

The 9,000-seat velodrome stadium, where ex-OSU Beavers coach Joe Avezzano once paced, brings Oregon’s Hayward Field to mind.

Hand-delivered microbrews—‘crafted,’ in Italian—lend an American touch at Vigorelli stadium, home to the Milan Seamen.

In the Milan stadium where the late Joe Avezzano paced sidelines as an encore to tackle football, no Oregon State orange is in sight Saturday night.

Nor any NFL Cowboys regalia, more typically associated with the Italian-American coach who won three Super Bowl rings with Dallas, as special teams maestro, after getting fired as Beavers capo in 1984.

Euphoric screams of “Vai!”—Go!—cancel any notion of down-home Americana at the semi-pro game between the Milan Seamen and the Frankfurt Galaxy, which compete in the European League of Football.

And yet the same pads pop, part of a sensory experience—air horns are tooted—that sees the Galaxy eke out a 40-33 win with a final-minute interception, a word etymologically rooted to Italian.

“I want to see a charismatic sport, something overpoweringly physical,” says Daniele De Gregorio, 32, a banker who won a ticket “by chance,” on hand for his first look at the gridiron sport whose icon—Tom Brady—has an ex-wife, Gisele Bündchen, infinitely more known in fashion-conscious Milan.

Not that Italians lack a cult captivation for the NFL. A husband and wife, two of several Chicago Bears fans in attendance, are outfitted in Brian Urlacher apparel. Turns out quarterback Joe Burrow’s got followers, too, along with gunslinger Patrick Mahomes, among the crowd of around 1,500, roughly a quarter of whom are German.

At least two Italians in the stands are fans of Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow.

A Seamen supporter, showing his Burrow colors, looks beyond the Galaxy sidelines.

Brian Urlacher, the hard-hitting Bears linebacker, is revered at sunset.

The score is knotted 23-23 when someone flips a switch, lighting up end-zone ultra fans monkeying with smoking flares, as in Serie-A soccer matches. Pom-pom-twirling cheerleaders spring to action. Where’s the SEC yell king?

Milan’s ultra fan base lights up a flare, common practice in Serie-A soccer games, even basketball.

“Let’s go, Seamen.”

Dressed in blue, the Seamen are playing their first season in the European League of Football, the continent’s top level.

No matter.

Nail-biting score swings like these, a guy’s entitled to a smoke, in this case just above the bicycle velodrome track encircling the turf below. 

An Italian wearing a Michigan Wolverines jersey saunters down to the first-row rail, furtively puffing between plays. The security guards are too busy chasing back fans to their assigned seats (Note: This writer found the secret gate).

Matteo Belloni, the smoker in question, grew up watching Brady, a Michigan graduate, and shares his birthday, Aug. 3. The Milan native, who wears Patriots and Buccaneers jerseys to other games, is not as tall as the NFL legend but likens his visage to his. Never mind the missing dimple.

“Brady was blond and had blue eyes—like me,” says Belloni, 38, a postman in the winter and a lifeguard in the summer. “I’ve been a fan since I was young.”

Was Brady blond?

Nobody’s quibbling. Belloni’s cigarette has burned to the butt, and he’s got to get back to his buddies.

“Brady was blond and had blue eyes—like me,” says Milan fan Matteo Belloni.

The public address announcers, one a German speaking English and the other an Italian recapping in Italiano, call out “Giorgio Tavecchio.”

Not just any Giorgio. 

Tavecchio, 32, played six seasons in the NFL as a placekicker, most famously as an Oakland Raider.

The Chicago faithful, few they may be, are spared last-second double-doink inferno, with no Cody Parkey present.

Milan is now 1-4 on the season while Frankfurt is 4-1.

Ex-NFL kicker Giorgio Tavecchio, at a promotional event in Milan, now plays for the Seamen.

When there’s inferno, there’s paradise. Sitting alone is a bear of a man, built like he might have played tackle football.

“Yeah, I did years ago,” says Marcello Trafossi, 43, who played on a semi-pro team in La Spezia. “I was a defensive tackle.”

The resident of coastal Cinque Terre—the pastel-shaded Italy every Vespa-loving American wants to know—has had a heavenly day, with the two-hour drive to Milan paying off: At noon, he was attending a World Endurance car race in nearby Monza before speeding down to central Milan for the football game.

“I had to get up at 6 a.m.,” says Trafossi, an automobile spare parts salesman who roots for the Pittsburgh Steelers because he likes quarterback Ben Roethlisberger and “acciaio”—steel.

Marcello Trafossi, a former semi-pro football player, killed two birds with one stone Saturday.

There’s plenty to like about about Vigorelli stadium, where Avezzano coached the Seamen in 2011. He died in Milan in 2012.

A shanked punt flies onto its flat roof and doesn’t come down, a fete perhaps never accomplished in the NFL.

Remodeled in 2015 after years of neglect, it has 9,000 seats, every one of which is sheltered from rain, unlike at University of Oregon’s cutting-edge Hayward Field, itself remade and the setting for yesterday’s USATF track and field championships.

Need cover from H2O or ultraviolet rays, anyone?

If only Milan’s city officials would wise up and have the seldom-used velodrome track torn down, something special might come calling: a venue for Diamond League track and field meets or even speed-skating. Milan is partial host to the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Vigorelli stadium, with its sloped wooden track, was remodeled to host velodrome bicycle racing events, few and far between.

Sometimes, Americans need to keep their mouths shut.

Better to settle for a toasted sausage sandwich, the only option here for a hot-dog hankering.

A Mahomes fan eating a toasted sausage sandwich, Italy’s answer to the hot dog.

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