Comunardo Niccolai, a footballer, son of a footballer, a legend of my childhood, has passed away. I felt he was from Livorno because he was tied to Livorno, being the son of Lorenzo Niccolai, called Braciola by the seething and imaginative Livorno fans, whose goal he had defended for several years, who had called him that because he was not afraid to throw himself kamikaze-style and to “smash” on those grassless fields, full of pebbles, which were the football fields of a century ago. An anti-fascist anarchist, his father, who had baptized him Comunardo, when he was born immediately after the war, in honor of the Paris Commune.
And he was proud of that name.
And he was a bit of an anarchist on the field, too. Not because he did what he wanted. But because, borrowing from his father the recklessness of action, in an attempt to save the unsaveable, he would occasionally pass balls into his own net that, probably, would have ended up in the net anyway.
Hello, Communard.
May the earth be light upon you!
The mayor and the municipal administration of Pistoia express their condolences for the passing of Comunardo Niccolai, a former Pistoia footballer who was a protagonist of the national football scene in the 1970s.
Today Pistoia loses a great defender, who grew up in the youth sector of Montecatini Calcio, a coach, an authoritative voice, a sportsman who made the history of Italian football and whose life was marked by great successes on the field. Memorable is the conquest of the championship with Cagliari, with whom he played for many seasons, and the victory of the silver with the blue jersey at the World Cup in Mexico in 1970, later won by Brazil.
The entire municipal administration extends its closeness to the family.