Antonio Di Natale Reminds Us Why Football Is About More Than Just Trophies

The goal itself was unremarkable. A chipped ball forward into the box, a poor defensive header and an instinctive finish from a striker who found himself in the perfect spot to take advantage.

Antonio Di Natale has scored better goals (much better) but not many that were more satisfying. This was his 200th Serie A strike, delivered, with perfect timing, in his 400th Serie A game. 

Timing. There are few strikers in the world with a keener sense of it than Di Natale, a man who continues, at 37 years old, to evade defenders who are stronger, fitter and faster. He has seven goals in 11 appearances so far this season, and not one of them has involved overpowering or out-sprinting an opponent.

More often than not, he has simply been in the right places at the right moments.

Viewing each goal in isolation, you might even conclude he had been lucky. Over the course of a prolific career, such explanations can safely be thrown out the window. The ball keeps landing at Di Natale’s feet because, like Pippo Inzaghi before him, he understands where that is likeliest to happen.

For poachers, football is often a numbers game. Keep taking up the right positions, and eventually you will get your reward.

Which is not to define Di Natale as an Inzaghi clone. For one thing, the Udinese man is blessed with superior technique. He might do his best work inside the 18-yard box, but Di Natale is also capable of whipping a free-kick into the top corner from the best part of 30 yards. You could never accuse him, as Johan Cruyff famously did Inzaghi, of not being able to play football.

Conversely, though, there is one criticism of Di Natale which could never be aimed at the Milan manager: that of lacking ambition. How can it be that a player of such obvious talents never played for a bigger club than Udinese and never won a major competition in his career? Di Natale has at different times been sought by the likes of Juventus and Milan but always turned them down. 

He did confess one regret this month, telling Sportweek magazine (h/t Fifa.com) that he would have loved to have played for Liverpool—just to experience the atmosphere of home games at Anfield. "When they took (Andrea) Dossena in 2008, there was talk of me going as well," he said. "But then nothing happened."

For the English club, that must go down as some regret. Liverpool had an in-form Fernando Torres scoring goals back then, but the image of Di Natale running on to through balls from Steven Gerrard and Xabi Alonso is certainly an alluring one.

Otherwise, though, the truth is that Di Natale has been happy exactly where he is. A quiet soul, he long ago came to the conclusion that family mattered more to him than fame and fortune. Deep down he is still the same kid who, when signed to Empoli’s academy at 13 years old, became so homesick that he ran away and fled 300 miles back to Naples, per The Score.

He would eventually return and grow to love Empoli—where he still has a family home. Likewise, he and his wife, Ilenia, have relished setting down roots in the Friuli since he joined Udinese in 2004. Besides scoring goals, Di Natale has set up a football school and become a partner in a coffee business.

But with the exception of that mooted Liverpool move, the idea of relocating yet again has simply never appealed. Di Natale and his family are happy. In life, is that not what most of us are seeking?

Fabrizio Giovannozzi/Associated Press

And is it not that sense of joy which makes Di Natale such a pleasure to watch? Rare are the players who smile more often during a game.

There was a brief window, earlier this year, when football stopped being fun. Di Natale's father was close to death, fighting a losing battle against a long illness, and Udinese were mired in a miserable run of form. The fans had turned on the team at a time when Di Natale felt most in need of support. Tired and frustrated, he told reporters he would retire at the end of the campaign (h/t ESPN FC). 

In the same Sportweek interview where he made his comments about Liverpool, Di Natale recalled telling his family of the decision (h/t the Guardian): "I had just got home and I said 'the time has come to stop'," he said. "[My wife] looked at me with the air of someone who is not very convinced and replied 'It's your career and you will know when the time comes. Do the right thing for you.' But Filippo, my son, started to laugh. Maybe he already knew how it would end."

That is to say, with Di Natale staying on for one more year and—who knows?—maybe even longer. For now, he has his sights set on leapfrogging Roberto Baggio into fifth place on Serie A’s all-time scoring charts. Six more goals would do it.

It would take a foolish soul to bet against him doing it. And it would take a narrow-minded one to argue that the player has wasted his talents by chasing happiness—and goals— throughout his life, instead of worrying about trophies.