The seventy years of Bettega, the champion who came from the rain



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Roberto Bettega, 70 on December 27, appeared during a downpour. From what you could see, the youth teams Juventus and Varese were on the pitch. His category coach, Mario Pedrale, already knew him well. In fact, that young man had blossomed too late. And perhaps with a few days to spare, he had reached the Juventus first team, incorporated into Ercole Rabitti’s group. But let’s go back to the downpour. Because there are two other eyes that will become fundamental for the construction of the child: those of Nils Liedholm. He admires the simplicity, the integrity, the ability or rather the natural predisposition to leave the role, as a pure attacker, he finds that he is a young man capable of fulfilling at least a hundred promises at once.

With Juventus having to send him somewhere to work, Liedholm’s option seems the best, if not the perfect one. In Serie B, with Varese. Then Bettega goes down a step. But to get the perfect boost when it comes to returning to Juventus. He shouldn’t just cancel the season: he’s set to make some Italian football history, with his headshots, the legendary England diving in, with his precocious gray hair, with his impossible, almost inhuman ability to control the states of cheer up. Varese, which also featured Sogliano, Braida, Carmignani, Sogliano, Gorin, Morini, Dolci, Rimbano, many of these linked to the future AC Milan, returned to Serie A.

He too, but in other places. Another key coach, on Bettega’s path, will be Bearzot (without detracting from those who trained him and won with him at Juventus, without many times finding the sensations of Vycpalek or Parola). The “vecio” had been enjoyed for years. He asked for attack and composure, clarity and power, in fact, only Bettega could afford to ask to come back like modern attackers do. Bettega gave him perhaps the most modern goal of those years, when in duet with Rossi, in front of the defense of Argentina that would soon become world champion, and receiving a heel strike, he convinced us that that team would give first after indescribable emotions.

It is not known how, however, it became evident that some of those boys, those blues, increased their value playing side by side, perhaps because almost all of them came from the same club, perhaps because that Argentine ring was only the beginning, perhaps because Bearzot really he had a mysterious extra team. Bettega was so central to the coach’s thinking that when he was warned, on May 24, 1982, that Bettega would not make it to the World Cup in Spain, he had a start. Bettega had injured her ligaments against Anderlecht in the European Cup due to a tremendous outing by Belgian goalkeeper Munaron. However, in November of the previous year. What can you do? They were different times. In every sense. So the recovery times were different too. Eight months was not long enough to rebuild a knee.

Bettega was a kind of advanced Falcao. So Bearzot envisioned it when the boy walked away from his green years, even though he had never aged (he was 31). Bettega is the spirit, the emblem of her years. A point of contact between the football of the “goleadores” and the fluidity of the movements of the mounted strikers like him, but in the following years. His life is not very easy. Let’s say a quiet life like the daily life of a family in the suburbs of Turin at the end of the war, which teaches us to be satisfied with what we have, even if it is not much. His father assembled parts in the body shop, his mother was a teacher. Growing up, perhaps because he came out of a downpour, he did nothing but alternate between sun and rain, joys and sorrows.

One could say that a life “tormented” by trials, as if he had to prove himself at all times. Roberto was born in the Madonna di Campagna neighborhood, one step away from the gray and fascinating heart of a Turin still hanging from its traumas, where exactly four months before (on August 27) Cesare Pavese had committed suicide. Soccer was salvation, schools to learn to stop the ball, the door to heaven, the colors of his team, Juventus, where he started playing at seven, the metaphor of existence, yin and yang, the black and white.

Bettega won a lot in Italy, seven league titles, only one UEFA Cup in Europe (her goal was decisive in the 2-1 defeat in the return to Bilbao). On October 31, 71, in the 1-4 that Juventus beat Milan at the San Siro, Bettega scored a double. Not only that: her heel goal becomes a catchphrase of perfection, a rare sight to see. It is such an elegant gesture that television images, while interpreting it, almost seem to take on color. But what promises to be a bad fall. In January 1972 he entered the clinic. Pleuritis. Stagnation of the suffering of war? Another ordeal. It stops for months. He has time to toast with his teammates to the scudetto he just won in the spring, but he only returns to the field on September 24, 1972, in Bologna.

Juve changes, their teammates change, Anastasi, Haller, Altafini, Boninsegna. The worker’s son is always there, Penna Bianca does not change her accent or her thoughts. In recent years it is less conciliatory, often quarreling, a historic fight with Agnolin, like a memorable duet with Brera on television. She seems to have forgotten the teachings of her mother Orsola, defined as a Gozzanian, a Miss Felicita, a lot of poetry and many things of little importance, but which are important, such as the aroma of homemade coffee that expands in the morning with the windows still. closed because the sun has not yet risen in Madonna di Campagna.

Ideally, he leaves Juventus to Platini, but first loses with him the final of the European Cup against Hamburg. It’s the ultimate black and white t-shirt. He goes to Canada at Toronto Blizzard but is not convinced either. During a short trip home, he has a car accident that forces him to resurrect within days. Bitter America. His executive career has been a light and a shadow, inside and out. Better to remember him there, to jump higher than everyone, like a soccer prince with springs in his feet. And in the eyes the tranquility of a peasant madonna.

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