Perhaps it was the breeze. It was blowing stiffly from the east, over the exposed Curva Sud, carrying the corner just a little further than Joe Hart was expecting. Not the sort of breeze you often see at the Etihad. Nor Old Trafford or Wembley. Still, the ball was there, and Hart was there, and so he was going to claim it.
A few seconds later, as Hart was picking the ball out of his net, he might have been permitted a short moment of wonderment at how it had all come to this.
From a career-defining performance against Real Madrid in the Champions League to the soggy end of Serie A in the space of five short months. From the adoring bosom of east Manchester and its familiar songs, to the stark terraces of northern Italy and a crowd of under 15,000, most of them Atalanta fans screeching and jeering his every touch. It was as if he had fallen asleep in April and woken in September, in the middle of a strange and surreal nightmare.
Hart dropped a clanger on his Torino debut CREDIT: ANSA
The Grand Tour, they used to call it. Centuries before Hart became the first English goalkeeper ever to feature in Serie A, this country used to send its young men of quality out to Italy by the carriage-load. They would summer in Turin and winter in Venice, discover classical art in Florence and browse antiquities in Rome. What it offered above all, apart from the opportunity to make excellent contacts in the European elite and contract syphilis, was renewal: rite of passage, lessons in worldliness, lessons in life.
Often it was taken in response to personal trauma: Lord Byron decamped to Italy in 1816 broke and alone, after his wife declared him insane and left him, taking the couple’s daughter with her. Perhaps, in that context, losing your place to Claudio Bravo does not seem quite so bad.
The England number one did make some good saves for his new club CREDIT: EPA
In these benighted post-Brexit days, of course, we are a lot more sniffy about this sort of thing. Hart had made no secret of the fact that his deadline-day loan to Torino was a move of last resort, having been chillingly ostracised at his beloved Manchester City. Torino, for their part, freely admitted that they only sought out Hart’s services after missing out on their first choice goalkeeper, Emiliano Viviano of Sampdoria. In the circumstances, it was unfortunate and yet weirdly fitting that England’s No1 should be listed as “John Hart” on the official team-sheet distributed just before kick-off.
Still, for a man stinging from a very public jilting by Pep Guardiola, Hart certainly could not complain about his welcome. The car that delivered him to Turin was mobbed by gleeful fans seeking pictures and autographs. He was warmly cheered at his first training session earlier this week. And coach Sinisa Mihajlovic revealed on Saturday that Hart was fitting in just fine, and had been given a basic footballing vocabulary of 50 words to learn. “Maybe Pep wants a goalkeeper who can play like Pep,” Mihajlovic joked. “If he has another player he doesn’t like, tell me and I will also have him here!”
So perhaps the pressure was off a little. Even if it would have been little consolation watching Bravo, his successor in the City goal, flailing and flapping his way through the Manchester derby on Saturday, surely Hart’s own debut would not be as torrid. Perhaps his endurance in the face of adversity would even win a few new fans for a player who has not always inspired the greatest of pathos.
It was in this frame of mind, then, that England’s John Hart took to the pitch. And though it was a quiet first 50 minutes for him, with Hart these things are all relative. Hart is not a Neville Southall or a David Seaman, the sort of goalkeeper who is content to do his job unnoticed and then go home. Whether it is shampoo adverts, grabbing a microphone at the end of an FA Cup Final and shouting “DECEEEEEENT” into it, or his flamboyant and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to distract Andrea Pirlo during a Euro 2012 penalty shoot-out, Hart has always branded himself as a big character, an active element, a keeper who will always try and make things happen.
Attilio Lombardo refused to blame Hart for his mistake CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES
So there was a lot of pointing. There was a lot of arm-spreading. There was also a lot of shouting, which was curious given that hardly any of the Torino squad speak English; perhaps he was trying out his 50-word vocabulary. There were also a couple of pinpoint long passes, and a firm hand to tip away a low cross by Franck Kessie. Nine minutes into the second half, Torino scored. So far, so good.
But seconds later came the corner from the left. Hart advanced unimpeded, and flapped at the ball. But he failed to get a clean contact, and it dropped at the feet of Andrea Masiello who slashed it into an empty net. As he lay helpless on the turf, Hartwaved both arms at the referee, appealing for something. A foul? Offside? The last six months of his life back? Who can say? “I am not angry with Hart,” Mihajlovic insisted afterwards. “It was a personal mistake. He did not deal with the corner that well, but this is football. No problem.”
Eric Dier: Joe Hart will do well at TorinoPlay!01:10
According to Gianluigi Buffon, perhaps the greatest of all Italian No1s, a goalkeeper must be “a masochist and an egocentric”. Every error is fatal, every chagrin amplified. The goalmouth can be a lonely place for the misplaced loanee. The Barcelona-Bayern-inspired vogue for fleet-footed keepers has piled the pressure on more orthodox goalkeepers to follow suit, as Pepe Reina pointed out in a recent interview. “I don’t think we should be called goalkeepers any more, because we are more like goal players,” he said.
Yet the Italian school of goalkeeping, as epitomised by the likes of Buffon, Dino Zoff and Walter Zenga, has often bucked this trend. In Italy, the goalkeeper is not merely an auxiliary sweeper or continuity man, but a figurehead, a focal point. To a far greater extent, they are expected to stay on their line and prioritise the hands over the feet. In youth football, they are often banned from kicking the ball long. In the long term, Hartand Serie A may well be the perfect match.
Conceding a last-gasp penalty CREDIT: ANSA
“I am very happy and curious to see Hart in Serie A,” said Franco Tancredi, the former Torino goalkeeper who worked with him as part of Fabio Capello’s England setup. “For me, he is the goalkeeper who is the most Italian out of all the English, the only one from the Premier League who could have made this jump.”
Attilio Lombardo, the Torino assistant manager and former Manchester City coach, was also enthusiastic. “He played well,” he insisted. “He was good with his feet, he did well when he hit the long passes. It was a positive game for him.”
Eight minutes from time, Hart’s misery was complete. Atalanta won a penalty and Franck Kessie sent him the wrong way to seal a 2-1 win. Yet even in disappointment, it is possible for Hart to see this setback as the making of him. Perhaps he will return from Italy a better, more rounded player. Or perhaps, like Byron, he will like it so much he will never return at all. After all,Hart is still in the early days of his Grand Tour, and nobody quite knows which way the wind will blow him.
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