Serafino Murru passed away in 1994. It would be difficult though to accept the terminal shockwaves of this roughly sketched street balladeer after the scraping acoustic spears of Lo Scudetto In Sardegna rip through any dustclouds gathered in the decades since Luigi Riva and the Rossoblu last ran rings around mainland hierarchies. Murru is the archetypal everyman, a sage of Cagliari’s back alleys, mews, and streets only mopeds dare to venture. Football is in the right hands (and feet naturally), one of the purest tribal expressions of cultural pride and a definitive sense of liminal defiance. In stepped Murru the musical poet in 1970, to frame with a jaunty Meditteranean cantu everything Cagliari’s only Serie A title to date meant not just to the city itself, what it meant to the whole of Sardinia too. With Sunday morning sunlight glancing across the piazza, and plump genial priests a few minutes late for kicking off mass as they bestoy a little more grace than usual on Boninsegna and co., Lo Scudetto In Sardegna is officially declared the thinking man and woman’s perscription for years of Vindaloo sickness and salt of the earth types whose only grasp of Romantic languages is Olé Olé Olé. Murru, the Cardinal, and the kid kicking a soggy tennis ball off a sandstone wall would also agree, that it really is a beautiful game when everything falls into place with delicate ease of Angelo Domenghini leaving another libero lying flat out on his arse. Bellissimo Serafino, bellissimo.