Gigi Riva, a journalist and writer from Bergamo, spent many years as a correspondent in the Balkans during the 1990s, where he closely followed the conflicts and met many of their key figures. Years later, in 2016, combining the precision of a historian with the sensitivity of a storyteller, he wrote Faruk’s Last Penalty. A Story of Football and War, reconstructing an event that was not only about sport but also marked the destiny of an entire people.

Amid the tragic and violent breakup of Yugoslavia, a missed penalty kick became the symbol of a country’s implosion. The man who missed that decisive shot was Faruk Hadžibegić, captain of Yugoslavia’s last united national team, on June 30, 1990, in Florence, against Maradona’s Argentina. The stage adaptation, written by the author himself in the form of a monologue, and the collaboration with Teatro Caverna, led Damiano Grasselli, actor and artistic director of the company, to bring it to the stage. The performance Faruk’s Last Penalty is based on real and dramatic events, highlighting the recurring human need to find a scapegoat. As always, as in every war, someone must be blamed. The casus belli of 1914 was Gavrilo Princip; in 1990, no one had yet fired a shot—at least not literally. A smoking gun was needed: what better occasion than a missed penalty kick in the quarter-finals of a World Cup?

The war in the former Yugoslavia is thus told from a profoundly human perspective—the weight of individual responsibility within the larger design of History. A line divides the world in two: the private from the historical, the intimate from the intimidating. “We loved our people,” cried Gavrilo Princip during his trial for killing the Archduke of Austria and his wife. Faruk’s words seem to echo his: “I have always only ever felt Yugoslav.” Between these two sentences lies the entire tragedy of 20th-century wars.

The performance invites the audience to immerse themselves in a page of history that is not so distant and still deeply relevant—while also entering the life of a man, his inner trial against himself, and the judgment imposed on him by his own people, as in the streets and in the stadiums, human lives have already become nothing more than moving targets.

Title: L'ultimo rigore di Faruk

A performance by and with Damiano Grasselli
Based on the novel Faruk’s Last Penalty by Gigi Riva
Stage adaptation by Gigi Riva
Assistant director Franco Zadra
Artistic collaboration Viviana Magoni
Video Stefano Battarola
Organization Francesca Villa
Technical direction Adriano Salvi
Produced by Teatro Caverna