CAGLIARI, Italy — Jakub Jankto just wants to play football, like he always did.
The Czech midfielder sits by his locker in the dressing room at Unipol Domus, Cagliari Calcio’s temporary home while the Stadio Sant’Elia silently awaits reconstruction next door. A small red-and-blue shirt cut from cardboard marks his place, with No. 21 printed on it. To the right, Paulo Azzi; to the left, Nicolas Viola, a leader who is always impeccably dressed. Jankto arrived on Sardinia this summer, his life forever changed in the two years since he was last in Italy, so he didn’t get to choose — the kitman does that — but it has worked out well: good players, good friends, he says.
It’s quiet now, empty. A Thursday afternoon after an early-morning gym session alone and the team training at the Crai Sport Centre, 13 miles north. Two figurines look over the room — the Virgin Mary on one side, Sant’Efisio on the other. A message runs round the walls: a land, a people, a team. On the way out, past manager Claudio Ranieri’s room, is another from Sugar Ray Leonard: you have to know you can win, you have to think you can win, you have to feel you can win. This place is sacred. Fun sometimes, too. It can also be unforgiving. And it is where he always wanted to be.
