“I found poetry in several stadiums”

And it also happened that he arrived in England, through a miracle performed by other Liverpool supporters. “You will never walk alone”, you know the song. Poetry came naturally, because, says Alin Dimache, “both in poetry and in football, we all bring our lives, stories, pains and joys.” The most poetic footballer he ever saw was Ronaldinho. From Liverpool, today, the player who predisposes him the most to lyricism is the Italian Chiesa.

– Alin Dimache, already established poetic performer, poet, poet debuting in volume (congratulations!). And not least a Liverpool fan. Why? Why “cormorants”? You are from Teleorman, how did you end up with your heart on Anfield Road, and not, say, CSM Alexandria?
– I was fascinated by football when I was little. I was an astrologer when I was 8-9 years old. At one point, in order not to limit my experiences as a microbist, I decided to support any team that had red or blue on the shirt in foreign championships, so at least half of each championship. I started then to be familiar with Xabi, Torres, Gerrard, Hyypiä. At that time, however, I could not be considered a Liverpool fan by any standards. A trigger was when they moved League 1 to GSP TV, I wasn't catching it on cable in Dobrotești then, so the stelism in me calmed down (and it never returned to the same intensity).

After a break from watching football, around the dawn of the 2010s, I noticed from the FIFA games that Liverpool had fallen a long way from when I was gawking at that Gerrard goal against West Ham in the FA Cup final in 2006. Then I felt obliged to stick with Liverpool, it seemed that they needed me somehow. You will laugh, dear Christmas, but I really believe that every man who sticks with a team is important. Somewhere, something moves in the unseen world when someone cries or laughs for Liverpool. At the risk of overstating the question, it's also more interesting how my relationship with Liverpool has evolved.

There won't be a more beautiful season like the 2013/2014 season when we missed the title at the end of the championship, after the splendid season made by Gerrard, Suarez, Sturridge, Coutinho and the others. On February 8, 2014, my folks thrashed Arsenal 5-1 at Anfield and I was in hospital for a week. Tube TV and Sturridge robot dance, 4-0 in the 20th minute.

Dear Christmas, what is the joy of a football match in a salon with children, all without hair, not knowing what is happening to you but having some suspicion that nothing will be the same again? The treatment, leukemia, lasted about 3 years. Liverpool has since meant even more. It was escape, it was dreaming, there were people who are there for each other when they are having a hard time. I had a part too. Around Christmas in 2015, I was still in the hospital. To say so from memory without checking, I think Martin Skrtel had broken his head about 3 times and scored at least one goal with a broken head in Arsenal's goal.

These were his little routines. I was then visited by Laura and Mihai Economu, the first Liverpool fans I knew in real life. My Santa Clauses through the Pavel Association. They had brought me Liverpool stuff, a backpack, a scarf, stickers. It was a big trick because I didn't have anything, I only had wallpapers, photos on Facebook on the cover. But see, dear Crăciun, that the Economu couple had bigger plans.

At the holiday party, they initiated an action by the fan club in Bucharest, which would have as its finality my arrival at Anfield for a match with Chelsea. Horia Matei, the man who raised the Romanian fan club from scratch, coagulated the Bucharest community to give me this joy. A man who didn't know much about me. It seemed unreal to me then, I didn't think people could be that good in general.

You see, dear Christmas, these are things that showed me another world. Not that I had a difficult childhood. It was nice, but around me, people were always calculating all their steps, all their money, all their relationships, they rarely said “thank you”, they sought to get more and give less. That's how they had learned, that's how they knew better, that life was hard. I'm not here to judge them. And I don't mean my family, but the community at large. Liverpool showed me that it is worth doing differently, that humanity is a little more than the small goals that I saw around.

I was going to leave the country for the first time and see with my own eyes people singing – in pubs, on the streets, in the stadium. And they don't sing for nothing, that means something, they sang for those who left, they sang for those who remained, glories, crosses – all were things that united them. I returned to Dobrotești with a different look. It's one of the stories that still guides me in the way I see around. Thanks again to Laura, Mihai, Horia and OLSC Romania. It mattered a lot, it still matters.

– Alin Dimache, what do you say football and poetry have in common?
– More than it would seem to the inexperienced user. Neither in football nor in poetry is it about what is said expressly, the meaning is always mysterious and intrinsic. Both poetry and football are essential to articulating this mysterious meaning. If we change the language, the meaning will change. Both football and poetry are metalanguages. In both poetry and football, we all bring our lives, stories, pains and joys. Have you noticed how many gallery songs sound like declarations of love? Almost all of them. There are people in this world for whom the only socially acceptable way to express their emotions is this, love for the team. This is just one example where football is not just a ball game. It's a language. And one that keeps some people somewhat whole. I make declarations of love to Federico Chiesa and that means a lot more than a player who doesn't catch the team and has the most beautiful gallery song

– Which Liverpool player makes you the most lyrical? Also, who is the most “poetic” player you've ever seen?
– Chiesa, I already said. There was also Nunez. There is something about players who do not adapt but have a special way of expressing themselves. The church is bright. Darwin was chaotic. When the line is drawn, maybe they are losers, but no one can say that they didn't matter. I think the most poetic I've ever seen is Ronaldinho. For him, it was not enough to score, pass, win, he sought to express himself through what he did on the field. He didn't need a vocabulary because the balloon had been invented. I don't even think he had, as it turned out later.

– Did you also play football as a child? What position did you play and why didn't you have a career? Can't handle “cabbage”?
– I played, I played. I was fat, dear Christmas. That was my post, fat and talkative. Although shy otherwise, on the field I was free-spirited, Gerrard-like shooting and Kenny Dalglish's (admittedly old) speed. Unfortunately, I also had something from Ionel Ganea's mania, my friends from that time know. I won't give more details, I'm ashamed. Anyway, the time when I played football was preferable to the time when I started wrestling.

– What's going on with Liverpool this year, why can't they win the title two years in a row? Is it a curse cast on the “cormorants” or what is the bug?
– It's not a curse. It has never been easy for Liverpool, nor should it be. I don't even think it's a bug. That's the game. However, I would like to publicly reproach Arne Slot in this way for not playing Chiesa more often. Arne, dear, if you're reading this, it's not nice, get your brains out! Put your brains in your head because you talk too much!!!

– Does Romania qualify for the 2026 World Cup? And if so, are you going to Mexico, the United States, Canada, to see the national team? Can poets afford such long journeys?
– I didn't allow myself to think. It is unlikely that I will miss a month due to Bucharest. Poets allow themselves to dream. Otherwise, according to possibilities. I would like to go if Romania played in Los Angeles. This is how I imagine the tricolors in night blooming jasmine perfume.

– Among the Romanian club teams, which do you think is the closest to poetry? In which stadium do you think you find poetry the easiest?
– I found poetry in several stadiums, but few can be cited in such a formal setting as this one. I cannot completely and forever strip myself of stelism. I have no way. It's unnatural to stick with a team as a child and screw around with rivals. Instead, I propose a poetic optic of stellismi: To love a team that builds its history on aggression, on all the advantages of the regime, a team that gathered (more or less by force) the best players in the country, then played the games to, together with Dinamo, share the results.

This mode of operation reverberated for a long time. Attention, I am not campaigning against this love, on the contrary, do these facts make the evening of May 7, 1986 less? I heard stories. How many joys did people have then? In the community, right? Or, closer to me, do the facts make less than the quarter with Rapid in the UEFA Cup? I knew happiness when Emil Grădinescu shouted into the microphone “Se vede Eindhoven” in the semi-final with Middlesborough. From then on, everything went downhill. Who can take this away from me? It seems to me that being a supporter of such a tainted and atrocious team is a form of forgiveness and kindness. You might be tempted to call me naive, and you might be right, but I am moved by this perspective, I prefer to perpetuate it. Anyway, Steaua is in some sort of purgatory now, maybe there's a football department up there. I hope it's purgatory and not hell, which is eternal. I hope there is forgiveness for the team I cried myself to sleep for on April 27, 2006.

– You tell us, because we know that poets walk around, other Romanian poets of our days, for whom do they fall in love and why?
– I avoid entourages, in general. I am more like an annex to any entourage. I prefer to walk in formations of 2, maximum 3. From 3 upwards people generally talk nonsense. From such a configuration of 3, with me and everything, I will remember Andrei Zbîrnea, Borussia Dortmund fan, and Vlad Alui Gheorghe, AC Milan fan. But I have no idea where they came from. It remains as a theme.

– Tell us, please, a poem, of yours or of others, which is centered on football and which you particularly like.
– If I still named it, it's a poem by Vlad Alui Gheorghe about Jerzy Dudek, published in Antologeek: Către tine, cel de over 2000 ani (Publishing house for art and literature, 2024).

Jerzy Dudek vs the rest of the world

what to see

sometimes it's hard to fall asleep because that's what happens when you take it

decisions

important, and it's a hard night, that you fall asleep

and you wake up twenty times in the first hour,

and what to think

actually for what?

And if you had a phone there and I had a phone here,

I was running out of fixed minutes for the holidays, and it wouldn't have been

no one at orange to charge me, or at cosmote to charge you

charge you

that cosmote also died and is probably now with you there, with

frequent representations at every block scale, or post office

and if I don't wonder all this,

I think about milan 2004-2005 when not me

thinking of you

what a team, God, I know it by heart, and the final

with Liverpool, because right now I don't know the dates of birth anymore

of

to people in our family but jamie carragher

shevchenko, and everyone else,

a long night, that at 20 years old I was coming home dusty

and that's it

I was thinking about falling asleep, and the same at 25, 26, 27, 30

jerzy dudek and his dance vs the rest of the world

and it keeps happening night after night, until one day when

all the penalties from milan will go to me,

and then there will be silence in the room,

and this busy street will not say anything either

and o

Me

I see further than a dream

started right before you left

waiting by a nearby phone

downloaded a sign from you

how are you waiting

at a horse race where he no longer has

who will wave the final flag.