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Paolo rossi he was my friend. Maybe that’s why I can’t write his death. I can’t choose between memories.
Starting with the three goals against Brazil is easy, but it doesn’t seem right to me. Paolo was much more, a good man, a hero of the time, light as a feather and disinterested in his ability. He knew her, and the more time passed, the more he loved her. But I never heard him say once that he was a great player.
Taking himself little seriously was his way of training, almost a stowaway from the penalty area, he had learned to hide because he did not have the body, it came as a betrayal, he stole a meter and it was a goal. In Madrid, on the night of the World Cup, he did an indescribable for Germany without slow motion. Oriali hit a ball into the center from the right that didn’t look like anything special. Cabrini, who marked Kaltz, was the first to dive to fetch him. Foerster, a magnificent and sculpted defender, understood the danger and leaped to get ahead of Rossi, but when he opened his eyes, Paolo was already over his shoulder and had hit him with the forehead. It was a goal. We were becoming world champions. From the stands we did not understand anything, we had only seen a lot of wrinkled men and the ball in the net two meters ahead. I remember the great Schumacher didn’t even have time to move. Then, from the dust of the ground, Rossi’s slender arms rose to the sky. That was his job, steal time.
He had great technique, he played football very well and he never thought he was a center forward. But when GB Fabbri in Vicenza told him that his role was that, he began to study it. He was slim, had a normal height, he could only count on control and sprint, gaze, position. As for doing better than anyone.
There have been years when he was famous as The Beatles, ambassador of everything. They invited him everywhere, rewarded him and listened to him like a space veteran. A journalist who followed the Italian ministers told me that in China diplomats, to break the ice of the official conversation, spoke for a quarter of an hour about Paolo Rossi. In Brazil they hated him for those three goals, a real, sincere feeling, never hidden. A few years after the World Cup, Paolo was invited to Brazil for a charity match. Play only once. Every time he approached the stands with the ball they threw everything at him, coins, peanuts, banana peels. Then he said that a taxi driver, when he realized who it was, stopped and wanted to force him to get out. Paolo didn’t know how to get angry, he managed to find a compromise. The taxi driver would not take you to your destination, he would only take you back to the hotel from where you left.
shadow carousel
Dead Paolo Rossi, the man of the 1982 World Cup
Above all, Paolo was a beautiful person. Said he knew everyone, he went from state invitations to picnic dinners. He was a happy pensive man, like intelligent Tuscans, who say goodbye to their melancholy wanting to get through the day, one at a time. It was everywhere, but there were few.
He liked that everything ended at dinner, with the wine he made on the Bucine hill, above the Arno valley, where he had taken the ruins and the land and transformed everything into a large farmhouse, some fifteen independent villas, all self-sufficient. Surrounded by a large swimming pool and a soccer field. And a lady who worked as a cook in the old kitchen for those who needed her and only if they were Paolo’s friends. Next to his house, the one who has Federica, the wife of maturity, who managed to give her three children in a few years making him a father when he was already a grandfather. It had been a deep love for Federica, as well as her need for children. At almost sixty years old, he had abandoned himself to the idea of that paternal drift. He did not ask questions, he looked for other vines and closed them on his hill outside the world, without a house around and with the best wine from La Montalcino.
He had many things in common with Baggio: popularity, Vicenza and his knees. Paolo was already operated on three times as a child in the Juve Spring. At the time his meniscus was said to be torn, there was no arthroscopy. To really understand, you had to open. And they were almost always torn ligaments. The pains have always accompanied him, they became unbearable. At twenty-eight he stopped being himself. At thirty he closed his career. The last feat had been two goals against Inter in the Milan shirt, the only two goals of that season. Later it became the memory of himself.
He looked for other ways, he was not someone who threw money. He had a company in Vicenza with his old partner Salvi, insurance companies, construction companies. He had a forty-year-old son who helped him. He never thought of being a coach, football has never tried too hard. It was too heavy and it didn’t belong to anyone. With Juventus he had won a championship scoring 13 goals, but also lost a Champions League final.
And anyway that was from Juve PLatin, Boniek and Boniperti, it is not this one. I didn’t have a record as an ex if it wasn’t in Vicenza. So he became a columnist, many years on Sky, others on Rai. I think it wasn’t exactly his job, football on TV basically bored him. Because with that almost apathetic air he always came up with a daring and surprising concept.
He had a really bad time in 1980 when he took it fromand years of disqualification for illegal gambling. He tells it very well in the two books about his life. He thought there was a hint of one of those draws that were convenient for both teams. He did not stay more than five minutes in that company, led by a partner while playing bingo. On Sunday he scored two goals, that condemned him, made the draw seem convenient. But he had already scored many goals before. The criminal trial acquitted him and all the other players, silently making the two-year ban. He spent the second training session with Juventus who had wanted him back.
I often attacked him in that period, I was the culprit. When we met in Turin for lunch, I tried to explain. He put his index finger to his nose and begged me to shut up. finished. We are still friends. Because Paul was like that, he didn’t want complications, he accepted everything. Perhaps all of us were just small elements of his desire to live in peace, not in peace but in peace. At the very least, we all contribute to defend it.
Don’t even get mad when news agencies around the world carried the story that he and Cabrini were engaged, in the true sense of the term. They were in the room with the world championships and friends of all time. An Italian journalist wrote that in the hour of freedom Rossi and Cabrini were on the balcony holding hands like two boyfriends. It was an innocent joke, but there is no innocence in the communication of a world cup. The next day, when we went to pick up Brazil at the Barcelona airport, the first thing Socrates said was: Is it true that Rossi and Cabrini are fags? That’s gay. He took it so little seriously that twenty-five years later, at his wedding, on the hill, in the town of Bucine, at the table with Cabrini, he told me laughing that in Vigo they were afraid: they had had the same mushroom on opposite sides of the chest . , as if one had joined it to the other. We laugh a lot and keep drinking.
Hi Paolo, don’t forget me.
December 10, 2020 (change December 10, 2020 | 08:30)
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