Sydney FC's Alessandro Del Piero has been a massive drawcard this season. Picture: Gregg Porteous Source: The Daily Telegraph
IT must feel like Sydney is letting you down on all fronts right now. All those promises of winning an Australian title, Christmas in the sunshine and coffee as good as any Milanese espresso bar.
Well after yesterday's grey skies, all we can say is thank goodness for the machiatos.
In fact, three months after you joined Sydney FC, you'd be forgiven for complete disorientation.
Europeans joke about Australia being upside down, but even that can't be the reason for a champions like you being rooted to the bottom of the A-League. It's about 15,000 light years from the glory of Juventus's Scudetto last May, let alone 15,000km. From first to last inside seven months - well, you did say you wanted a challenge!
All of which is to say - we share your pain. We empathise until it hurts. If there was anything we could do to ameliorate the agony that has been Sydney FC's season so far, we'd be there quicker than a skier on the Cortina d'Ampezzo slopes you know so well.
For the thing is, despite it all, we really, really want you to stay another year. Think of yourself as the ultimate department store Santa, and we the excited, but apprehensive, line of children waiting for a blessing.
Forget about the football for a moment. Easier said than done, it's true, but bear with us.
Surely, when you pull that baseball cap down low and potter round Sydney's eastern suburbs, you must think - I could get used to this.
To the quality of the produce, for one thing, all year round. Seafood in your shopping bag hours after it was caught. A superb array of greens from Calabrese broccoli that's so familiar to Asian bok choi. Pugliese loaves like nonna used to bake, and in Haberfield still does. For a consumption-conscious elite athlete, that's got to be a substantial tick.
To the all-round temperate climate, for another. The settentrione region of Italy where you had lived all your life until now is scenically spectacular in the extreme - but let's be honest, it also knows how to put on a fearsome winter.
How much better are those freezing banks of snow when they're confined to Christmas cards?
Wait until you try winter here. It's like an Italian early spring, crispness around the edges of early morning and night but days to die for. And a lot of people throw in a second Christmas in July, just for the winter-solstice heck of it.
Unfortunately there's also the football. You'd be forgiven for looking across town at the Western Sydney Wanderers - a team formed only a few months ago, no really - and wonder if in agreeing to join "Sydney" you should have been a bit more specific.
At least the injury that meant you were on the bench for the derby gave you a great seat to watch them. But the brutal truth is you do play for Sydney FC, and to say it's been a disappointing season would be to suggest that King Herod found small children a touch irritating.
The temptation must be to cut your losses and leave at the end of the season, back to the safety of Europe, or even the MLS.
But we hear all the well-worn aphorisms from your teammates, about the fact you're a fighter not a quitter, a champion, a winner.
And all we can do is believe, with the fervency of every preschooler in the country on Christmas Eve, that there will be a happy ending to this fairytale which so far is more of a horror movie.
Because you might not realise it, but everything you've done so far has been for a reason.
Every extra training session you
do by yourself, every time you illustrate the way to roll a defender to a callow teammate, every stretch you force your protesting hamstrings to make, shows the way football in this country can improve.
This is a results-driven game, but in the long run some of those come intangibly, off the pitch. And no matter how Sydney's fortunes fluctuate over the next 15 months or so, your being here will have a hugely positive effect on those around you.
So a belated Merry Christmas and a truly happy New Year to all of the Del Piero clan. And please, let's do it all again next year.
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