2 exchange students are friends, foes> One plays soccer at HA, the other for rival Bangor

Minutes after the Bangor boys soccer team beat Hampden three weeks ago, Andrea Milocco was chatting with his Bangor teammates on the sidelines when Marzio Molinari broke away from the dejected Hampden group and tapped Milocco on the shoulder.

Milocco’s face lit up as he looked up and stepped away from the crowd for a few words with Molinari. The two talked, gestured and laughed. The game was forgotten for a minute as the Italian exchange students caught up in their own language.

Milocco and Molinari are living in the Bangor area for the year, attending high school and improving their all-important English skills. When Milocco joined the Bangor boys team and Molinari caught on with Hampden’s squad, they found out they’d be playing each other at least twice this season.

They also discovered the rivalry that exists between Hampden and Bangor – two of the top teams in the area – and have even started to feel the tension. The Rams and the Broncos will meet for the last time in the regular season at 6 p.m. today in Hampden.

Both Milocco and Molinari come from cities in northern Italy, although Milocco lives just across the eastern border from Slovenia and Molinari is from Varano Borghi, a Milan suburb near the western side of the country.

The Italians, who are in the same foreign student program, met on the plane from Rome. They started talking when they found out they were both headed for Bangor. Two months into their stay, Milocco and Molinari talk on the phone, at the exchange program’s meetings, and after games.

But just because Milocco and Molinari are friendly doesn’t mean they haven’t become caught up in the rivalry between the two teams.

“I can feel this,” Molinari said of his pregame nerves. “Everybody [tells] me that the match Hampden-Bangor is the most important of the year and I am in a temper before the game. I think I will be in a temper before the game.”

Milocco has made an immediate impact on this year’s Bangor team. He has six goals, so far, including a hat trick against Brewer last week.

For Molinari, things have been a little slower. He started on defense at the beginning of the season but has since been moved to the bench.

“Language has been a real barrier for him,” Hampden coach Andy Frace said. “It’s like, we’re saying things to him on the field and he doesn’t understand it, so he doesn’t do it. But he’s coming along and he’s off the bench in the first half. The bottom line is that he’s a really good person and he fits well into the program.”

At home, Milocco said, he plays soccer with friends on the weekends but his sport of choice has been handball. In the U.S., he decided to stick with his country’s national craze.

Molinari, on the other hand, is an avid footballer. In Italy he plays for a club team called Vergiatese.

Both Italians said they are surprised at the level of soccer played here.

“I didn’t think that there was good soccer here, it’s not the same soccer in Italy,” Milocco said. “But you can find people who are very good with soccer. I was thinking before I come here that these people don’t know how to play soccer, but they know how to play. This is good.”