For some time, the beautiful Alena has been in the midst of a media frenzy because of the rumours surrounding her married life with Gianluigi Buffon, the number one of the Italian national team. Wild rumours circulating with tabloids going crazy, on the web you can read everything. However, we do not want to get into debates on the value of the situation. We would rather highlight the dignity with which Alena has reacted to this media storm, a reaction of great composure, and a probably even unexpected one given what showbiz stars usually reserve us, in these situations, for whom the occasions serve as a way of appearing in more papers and getting people to talk about them.
We witnessed Alena guarding a trench in defence of her family. No bitter, annoyed remarks left for reporters, just a simple denial of an impending divorce with Super Gigi. Indeed, on the 19th of January, on the occasion of the thirty-sixth birthday of her husband, she wrote on Twitter, wishing Buffon “very much serenity”.
Perhaps it is also the fact she never steps out of line, and for her dignity and attachment to family values that Italians side with Alena, particularly women. In various surveys that ask readers to choose between her and her alleged rival, the numbers of those cheering on Šeredová reach the stars.
To better understand her character and the special relationship she has with Italy, we have “dug up”, as they say, an unpublished interview which Alena gave us a few years ago. A conversation which was never published, since we perhaps mistakenly, gave priority to other topics, which seemed more important at the time.
After all these years in Italy, more than ten now, it is inevitable to talk about her relationship with the Italian mentality, which is so different from that of the Czechs. It was indeed a subject on which Alena did not need any coaxing or pushing: “I must say that I feel I have quite an Italian character, I fit in very well in your country. To be honest, at first I really liked the warm way in which people behaved in Italy. In the end, I realized that I occasionally miss the coldness of my people, because being warm sometimes slides into being intrusive… like kisses on the cheek for everyone. In my homeland to some people, we do not even offer our hand. Let’s say that there are two different ways of behaving, but neither one is unbearable however. Ultimately, I do not think it is difficult to live with Italians”, a phrase that comes with a smile.
However, without jumping to the present, do we also remember who Alena is and where her story began? She was born in the Prague district of Vinohrady, where she spent her childhood with her parents and younger sister Eliška. She entered the world of fashion very soon, and at the age of fourteen she began modelling. By fifteen she had already posed for the top Czech fashion photographer, Jadran Šetlík. After an adolescence consisting mainly of catwalks and sacrifices, at seventeen, Alena arrived, for the first time in Milan, the Italian fashion capital. A few years later, her modelling career took off and she decided to settle in Italy, where her relationship with Gigi Buffon started, with whom she would have two sons, Louis Thomas and David Lee, and in June 2011, the wedding in the cathedral of Vyšehrad, in Prague.
Despite the intense feelings with the Bel Paese, Alena did not hide that in certain moments the nostalgia for her beloved Prague is felt. “When I’m away I miss my mother’s cooking. However, it is also true that when I’m in Prague for long, I begin to miss Italy, its food, and maybe a good glass of wine”.
It is said that Prague and Turin are the magical cities par excellence. How does Šeredová perceive these strange forces, which according to experts of esotericism are common in the two cities? “I’m only saying that it seems to me that Prague has much in common with Turin, it seems so at least. It ends there however, I do not believe in magic”, is her way of ending the discussion.
The back and forth movement between her country of origin and the country of adoption, for a person like her, is in any case inevitable. Alena talks about it in this way: “I would like to spend part of the year in Prague with my family, I would even like my children to attend the Czech school, but I know that it is an almost impossible dream, for a number of reasons including the profession of Gianluigi and his difficulties with our language”.
With the marriage and the birth of her children, Alena has probably sacrificed much of her professional career. In an old statement made to a newspaper she spoke of “a choice of values”, in order to share every free moment with her family.
The nostalgia of Prague, however, stimulates her curiosity. What a bond Alena has with her hometown after many years abroad? “I love returning to the places of my childhood, the streets and parks of the district of Vinohrady, but cannot deny that even the tourist places are part of my heart. I always go on Charles Bridge, to the castle and the restaurant of my dad which is found right on Hradčanské náměstí”.
We don’t find it hard to believe either, given that more than once will tourists have bumped into her walking on Charles Bridge and on the narrow streets of the historical centre of Prague, maybe holding a glass of svařák, the hot wine typical of Czech winter. Without ever denying an autograph, a picture, or a simple smile. The same simplicity and sympathy with which we have often seen her mingling with the Italian fans, every time that the Azzurri play.
Simplicity, elegance, manners: qualities that have not been lacking even in the moment of crisis in her marriage. Qualities for which she has earned the respect and sympathy of the Italians who are rooting for her, for once forgetting football.
by Maurizio Marcellino