“Before really getting into his Tuesday column in La Repubblica back in early December, Gabriele Romagnoli had a confession to make. ‘I love Gervinho,’ he wrote. ‘I will not be impartial. It’s necessary to write it with a heart between the subject and the direct object like in the NY logo… I am not a Romanista and I never succumbed to the ecstatic aesthetics of Garrincha, George Best or Gigi Meroni. Rather, it’s a sort of literary passion: the kind that makes you prefer Yanez to Sandokan [the protagonists of Emilio Salgari’s 19th century pirate novels] or Sancho Panza to Don Quixote. With poetic license, this is Gervinho, he’s a creature of ‘Gervantes’: a dreamer-squire, who drags the indolent hero beyond the limits of his fantasy.’ Reading that, it’s fair to say Gervinho has found an appreciation in Italy that he never did in England.” Who Scored?