Lions serious about their superstitions
I didn’t think twice about asking the question. It was pretty basic, and I’d talked to a couple other players earlier in the week about the same thing.
“Do all the injuries recently make you nervous?” I posed to midfielder
“I don’t know, probably,” he replied in English much-improved from last year but still a little broken.
“The mind commands the body. Every player has a different mentality, and now we have this little problem of injuries. The guys playing in place of those who have injuries play well, the same, no problem.”
It was a good answer, but not exactly what I was looking for. So I asked a follow-up: “But for you personally, does it make you hyper-vigilant of your body?”
With that, he quickly turned to his translator and rattled off in Italian, “You’re bringing unluckiness to me, a jinx.”
Everyone laughed — until four days later he limped off the field 17 minutes into Orlando City’s home match against the New York Red Bulls.
A calf injury. My heart sank, and the jeers from Orlando City’s staff began almost immediately in the press box.
“It’s not my fault,” I countered. “I don’t have that power!”
But Nocerino didn’t forget. He sought me out during postgame interviews and, pointing his finger, said, “You and me, we’re done! I can't believe it. You’re like a black cat that has crossed my path.”
I couldn’t tell by his tone if he was joking or serious.
He wouldn’t look at me the entire next week of training, except to say, “No! No! No black cat!”
I researched Italian good-luck charms and almost bought him a cornicello, a twisted horn said to protect the wearer from the curse of the evil eye.
After finding out his injury was simple inflammation and recovering well enough to play a full 90 minutes in the Lions’ win Saturday over the L.A. Galaxy, Nocerino COMMENTARY eased up a bit and even cracked a smile as he sneered at my unlucky aura.
I knew better than to bring it up Wednesday when he gave an interview for the first time since the hex, but the whole scenario made me curious if other players were as superstitious.
Of course athlete superstitions are welldocumented and nothing new, but this time, it was personal.
“Do you think I’m a jinx?” I asked midfielder and forward
“No,” Barnes said to my relief. “I have one superstition; I pray. That’s it.”
said he always keeps on the boots he scores in.
laughed when asked and said he used to have plenty when he was younger but he’s “done away with that.”
“If you start with superstitions, you’ll just go crazy,” he said.
That didn’t stop him from worrying a bit, though, when things didn’t go as planned before the last match.
“I noticed before the game that I kind of did everything different from the first game I started, which went well and we won, so I got a bit worried actually ... I was like, ‘Oh, please go well,’ but it did,” Sutter said. “So just goes to show that I’m pretty easy going.”
That’s unlike how Lions coach
was in his playing days. He had so many superstitions he couldn't even think of an example right away when asked.
“Gosh, I was almost borderline neurotic about things,” Kreis said with a smirk. “Speak to my wife, and it was starting really from two or three days before the match, I would have to eat the same things at the same times. Two nights before the games it was always steak. One night before it was always pasta. Four hours before the game, it was pasta and chicken. The mornings of the game, there always needed to be some pancakes or some type of starch involved.
“Yeah, I don’t know if you call that superstition or obsessive compulsive.”
So which player on the team is the most superstitious?
“Surprisingly, the person I thought would be ... is probably not, and that would be
Kreis said. “But I think he takes a much better approach to it than I ever did.”
Well, I know who gets my vote.