Pasquale Mazzocchi spent a lifetime building up to this moment. One of six kids born to his parents in Barra, a suburb of Naples, he could easily have gone down a dangerous path. “In some neighbourhoods on the edge of the city, when you struggle to make it to the end of the month [financially], with a big family, unfortunately you might do the wrong thing,” the defender told La Repubblica in 2022. “Young people tend to go this way.”
Football offered him a different direction, a road that would take him far from home. By nine years old, he had started working for a fruit stand after school to save up for boots. At 11, he joined Benevento’s academy system, moving an hour’s drive from home and seeing his parents just once a month. His next club was Hellas Verona, 440 miles away to the north.
