Charlutz

Charles Valenti

Description

Here is a story about love of country, of community, of family and friends, teammates, and soldiers, who have banded together like brothers. This is the story of one very special soldier and the knowledge he passed on to his son.
The soldier was known as a Golden Lion. He taught his cub to become an athlete with skills sharpened by military philosophies and knowledge of American sports. Here, one will find a love of soccer, the seed of which was planted in a distant land. The young plant was brought to America, and the blossom became known as the Cleveland High School soccer team.
Here, you will travel. You will experience life and love in the hamlet of Verona, Italy. Verona, the birthplace of “Romeo and Juliet”. Destiny will take you across the Atlantic ocean to another hamlet called Ridgewood in the Big Apple know as New York City. Here, you will experience Camelot, where soccer and baseball embrace military thought.

Sujets

• Biography
• Patriotism
• Country
• Valenti
• Autobiography
• Love
• Charles
• Musique country

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 24 janvier 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669863144
• Langue: English

Extrait

CHARLUTZ
Charles Valenti

Copyright © 2023 by Charles Valenti.
 
ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6698-6315-1

eBook
978-1-6698-6314-4
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
 
 
 
Rev. date: 01/23/2023
 
 
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
840114
Contents
Preface
 
Chapter 1 The Ghost And The Darkness
Chapter 2 Yorkville, 1935
Chapter 3 You’re In The Army, Now!
Chapter 4 The Race Across France
Chapter 5 An Intelligent Man
Chapter 6 Crazy Like the Fox!
Chapter 7 Piazza Bra
Chapter 8 Como Bella la Verona
Chapter 9 Flash Forward
Chapter 10 Ridgewood N.Y.C.
Chapter 11 Three Coins In The Fountain
Chapter 12 Special Operations
Chapter 13 Curveballs and Screwballs
Chapter 14 Order of Battle
Chapter 15 The Calculated Risk
Chapter 16 Lessons From A Battle
Chapter 17 The Outlier Chameleons Of Ridgewood
Chapter 18 “Charlie, Are You Getting This?”
 
The Arsenal: A Review
About The Author
Preface

This book has been written with the intention that it will serve to encourage a sense of confidence on the part of the American soccer coach. It is hoped that newfound confidence in traditional American concepts will encourage the coach to share his rich sports background with our younger generation of athletes.
The American soccer coach may not even be aware of just how much he has to offer his athletes, and by reading this book, he will experience a renaissance that may serve to enlighten far more people than just the reader. Within these pages are revelations that are so simple to the point that they have been overlooked in our search for more complex solutions. For years, we have been struggling to obtain an understanding of soccer and an ability to teach the concepts to our players in a way that we can all relate to and in terms that the American coach and athlete can identify. Had we been aware that solutions reside in our own athletic background, so much could already have been accomplished.
This book will benefit readers searching for a way of delivering knowledge so long held within themselves.
All American: An American Approach to Soccer has been written in the hope that it will serve to enlighten the American coach and his athletes, both foreign and American. Hopefully, it may awaken the American coach so that he may discover a forgotten natural resource.
The background possessed by most American coaches is one stocked heavily with ideologies inherent in football, basketball, and baseball. He has surmised that this background does not qualify him with experience enough to expect proficiency on the soccer field in his role as leader and teacher of foreign and American athletes. In attempting to bring the point home, let the record show that I never played organized soccer and yet I have been successful enough to develop a style based upon my American sports background, the principles of which warrant the writing of this book. You will soon realize that much of your valuable and extremely diverse knowledge has been withdrawn from application to the sport of soccer up to this point. It is to reverse this trend that the writing of the American Approach to Soccer has been undertaken.
This book differs from all others on the subject in that it implies we need learn very little more than we already know. This book will serve to awaken the reader to his own untapped potential. The writer does not pretend to offer magical solutions to complex problems. Instead, it is shown that by adaptation of his vast source of athletic knowledge, the American coach may already have the natural ability to offer his athletes more than anyone.
Finally, it is hoped that we might identify culturally by infusing our American sports techniques into the sport of soccer. We may be able to offer enlightenment to the extent that soccer may one day be accepted as an American sport.
If we pursue an American approach, as indicated in this book, we may witness as our ultimate reward the American sports fan embracing soccer with open arms.
In closing, I would like to address my attention to my peers who coach football, basketball, or baseball. Because of the proficiency you enjoy at your sport, you are already more than qualified to become a coach of soccer. Therefore, on behalf of all our young athletes, both girls and boys, I invite you to come and join me. Let this book serve as your invitation.
Welcome aboard!
–– Charles L. Valenti
Coach, Soccer and Baseball
Cleveland High School, NYC

FAIRYTALES CAN COME TRUE, THEY CAN HAPPEN TO YOU
I had drifted off to sleep with the ample time afforded by the long flight from Milano to New York. My dreams were quite vivid in replaying all of my experiences as a young man living in Italy. There were many dreams, interrupted by waking up for a bite to eat, or a trip to the bathroom, or conversation with my family. There had to he many dreams in order to replay all I had been so fortunate to find in the treasure trove that I can only refer to as “Saturdays Paradise”.
The hum of the engines combined with the boring expanse of the clouds and ocean below, soon brought me to another place. I found myself once again on my bicycle, this time circling around a patio near the statue of “Juliet”, as I looked above at her famous balcony. This paradise was known throughout the world as Verona, Italy. And here on this patio stood Romeo, as I imagined him looking up to her and saying. “When are you going to realize that it was just the timing that was wrong, Juliet?”
In my dream, Romeo continues as he reasons with her. “We came up on different streets, so they were not at all the same, but our dream was just the same. And I dreamed your dream for you and now your dream is real. When are you going to realize that it was just the timing that was wrong, Juliet”?
I am on the plane bound for New York City, on a flight from Milano, as my dream continues. Looking down from the balcony where I visited frequently, Juliet began to explain. “The dice were loaded from the start. When we met, you exploded in my heart. When are you going to realize that it was just the timing that was wrong, Romeo”? And Romeo replies, “I can’t think of everything, but I’ll do anything for you”. And then it is Juliet, who from that balconey I visited answers, “I can’t do anything right now, but be in love with you, Romeo”!
And now, I am pedaling out of that courtyard under the archway that enters onto a nearby street. The very same archway under which Romeo had left dejectedly as he said to Juliet, “All I do is miss you and the way it used to be, all I do is keep the beat with my friends as company”. And I can just hear her now as I am pedaling for home as she calls out to him. “All I do is kiss you, although only in my dreams”.
The flight from Milano to New York City provided me with ample time to wonder about the paradise I had to leave. We had received orders to return to stateside, since our three year tour of duty had run its course. We are a military family, and when you receive orders to relocate, well, an order is an order, and the only acceptable answer is, “Yes Sir” my Uncle Vincent picked us up at Idlewild Airport and now I’m looking at tons of traffic as he drives through the crowded streets of Manhattan. We will be staying at his place in Yorkville for the time being. I don’t know about this whole thing. All I can think about is my paradise lost. Somehow, I found it, and now I have lost it. Somehow, it found me, and now it has lost me, in this new world called New York City.
On the way to Yorkville, I am wondering not so much where I am going, instead I find myself holding on tightly to the memories of where I have come from. I’m a New Yorker, so this should be a moment of joy and great expectation, however I have reservations in that regard. Too much in the area of great expectations has already occurred in a distant land and I am confused. Have I arrived home or have I left home? That is the quandary I am now beginning to ponder. As you may begin to realize my feelings of misgiving and melancholy, by putting yourself in my situation, understand that I am a young man of thirteen years of age. How could a kid of that age have such complex and confusing interpretations about life? You might wonder.
Of course you are now thinking about how life was for you when you entered your own teenage years, in order to identify and bring into perspective a time in life that I am relating. I will wager that you believed with all your heart that the whole world was before you, and soon you would begin to learn about life and all its wonders. But what if I tell you that by the age of thirteen I have already learned much of what I will need to carry me through a lifetime. Could you make that claim? Of course, I didn’t know that at the time, for only the passing of time has brought forth that realization. However, those uneasy feelings of misgiving that I have alluded to were early signs. Signs that my roots had taken to soil in another place, like it or not. A place where learning doesn’t end with dismissal from school on Frid