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Former soccer player Mauro Bellugi, former defender of Inter and the national team, has been hospitalized since November 4 at the Niguarda hospital in Milan, after having tested positive for the coronavirus. Both legs have recently been amputated: the first on November 13, the second on November 20. The double amputation was decided by the doctors after the worsening of other pathologies that Bellugi had before contracting COVID-19.
The news of his illness and amputations was given yesterday by Bellugi himself in an interview with the journalist Luca Serafini. Bellugi, who also played in Napoli and Bologna, won the Serie A championship with Inter in 1971 and participated with the national team in the 1974 and 1978 World Cups. At Inter he only scored one goal, in the Champions Cup of November 1971. Referring to that goal, Bellugi told Serafini: “They even cut off the leg with which I scored against Borussia Monchengladbach.” On the other hand, Bellugi said that he will put on “prosthetics like Pistorius’s, so that he can overtake you in the corridors of television studios.” After his career as a footballer, in fact, after a brief experience as a coach, Bellugi had become a columnist for several local televisions.
Today the story of Bellugi and his health conditions finds much space in Italian newspapers. Wife Lory told al. Messenger Service that remains optimistic. «The road is long but little by little it will come out. The virus caused ischemia. The only solution was to amputate the legs. Carletto Muraro, who played for Inter from 1973 to 1975, said: «I met him when Mauro was finishing at Inter and I was starting. On the bench Helenio Herrera, the return of the Magician. The first time with San Siro. Against Cagliari. And Mauro putting the muzzle on Gigi Riva. As a player he lacked nothing. Great defender. And always ready to pat the partner who made a mistake on the back. “
Mauro Bellugi in contrast to Pele, at the American Bicentennial Soccer Cup in Washington, May 23, 1976 (AP)
Maurizio Crosetti of Republic yesterday he spoke with Bellugi by phone, in an interview in which, he says, the ex-footballer “cries and laughs.” After a memory of Paolo Rossi (“I think of Paolino, the worst of this year, my poor dear friend”), Bellugi recounted his last month: “I had pain everywhere, in my legs, in my back. One night, even standing up and it had never happened to me. I take off my socks and see that they have turned black as tar. So I run to the Monzino hospital where my friend Piero Montorsi, a madman from Inter, looks at me and says: Mauro, it’s useless turn it around, if you want to live you have to cut it off, otherwise you can die in two hours. He had gangrene up to his groin and a pain, no, seriously, you can’t understand that badly. “
Bellugi then explained how he has been suffering from “a Mediterranean disease” for some time, which however “needed a partner, a snack companion, and together with COVID they met and made a mess, a massacre of their own, those two together.” unleashed. Then he joked, recalling that the doctor who operated on him, Inter, touched the leg that scored that goal against Borussia, the only one in his career, before amputating it. And I answered him: Piero, but if you amputated Messi, what would you do? Did he touch your leg six hundred times, once per goal? ».
Speaking of that goal, Bellugi recalled: “I receive this shot, postponed about ten meters beyond its area: the stop with the chest and the shot with the right leg, under the crossbar. A true striker number! I’ve always thought that if you only do one thing in life, everyone should remember that thing for eternity. I’m honest, losing the leg of the goal against Borussia made me turn the balls, without offending that other leg, the left one, poor thing … ».
Then Bellugi returned to the subject of prosthetics, saying that he thinks “in the car that I will drive without legs”, in prosthetics with sensors that is “like having a kind of foot.” He said he would like to “start jogging again”, but as a “retired old footballer” he would have to “walk from home to restaurant and from restaurant to home.” For Bellugi, the example to follow is that of Alex Zanardi, although “he is a triple superhero, I am just a man with a bit of balls that will be inspired by Alex”.
Bellugi came to the first team from the Inter youth ranks. From 1969 to 1974 he played 90 games, then 81 with Bologna from 1975 to 1979. In those years he also played the 1978 World Cup in Argentina. Of that World Cup, Bellugi himself said: «They said, I know, that Bellugi has a shorter leg, that it was crazy to let me play for the national team, that Bearzot had … he fell in love with me. I read, I listened, I was silent. I prefer to respond in the field. Soccer is my job: I never betrayed it, I will never betray it. Bellugi is a man ».
Bellugi was an atypical defender for his generation, because he knew how to play well with his feet and contribute to the team’s game, but he was also as tough as was necessary in football at the time. Since the 1978 World Cup, Bellugi told Alfeo Biagi in the past about the German Klaus Fischer’s scoring: “He thought he was intimidating me by catapulting, kicking, hitting me as soon as he could. You saw how it ended: in a flying inning, I stretched my elbow, he hit my face, the doctor rushed to sew his lip hanging over his chin, there on the playing field … I’m not looking for a fight. But if they look for me they will always find me ».
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