Seventies. In the unprecedented setting of an arbëresh community (the Albanians of Italy) in a small town nestled in the hills of Ionian Calabria, Marco, a thirteen-year-old boy, finds himself having to manage a complicated family situation. By chance he discovers that her sister Elisa, a university student in Cosenza, has a reaction with a married man much older than her.

Marcello is a Calabrian boy who dreams of becoming a footballer and lives with his mother, Tereza, of Arbëreshë origin, in the popular neighborhood called "Aranceto". During the imminent period of the 1990s World Cup, he meets Andrea Viscomi, a late career footballer, captain of the local football team, U.S.Collidoro. Their lives are intertwined. The friendship with the footballer rekindles in the boy the desire for a father figure that he has never had and in the footballer a forgotten carefree time, which has been lost above all due to his involvement in match-fixing. The coming-of-age novel of Marcello crosses the descending parable of Andrea's career, in the sign of a friendship necessary for both.