Fiorentina’s former Enfant Prodige plays in the second Turkish series in the Boluspor and tells it: “Every time I was about to take off something, it was slowed down, I didn’t sleep at night”
Bolu is a kind of Bormio di Türkiye, you go to ski and relax at the spa. In short, to be reborn. And evidently it works, because precisely on the borders of the Empire he is reborn by Babacar. The former Fiorentina prodigy child plays in the second Turkish series with Boluspor and is showing flashes of what it could be. He has scored 5 goals in the last three games: right -handed cannon, flew on the counterattack, even a thirty -meter punishment to get around the barrier. Baba is playing the playoffs to go up to Super Lig and challenge Mourinho or Muslera as in the old days, he is only 32 years old and still time to take other satisfactions. Of him, “talent with unlimited perspectives”, we lost much, and not always because of him. One thing above all: “I had to be a great basketball player”.
“In Senegal as a boy I was a nice playmaker. I lived in front of the basketball court, and my not even knew that I also played football. But on the field where we did the matches with friends also trained a youth team, they saw me and one day they asked me if I wanted to go with them to play a tournament in France. Obviously I said yes. Result? Capococannoniere as a best player. He said that maybe I would have done better to change sports … “
“Babacar is a talent with unlimited perspectives”. The sentence is by Prandelli, if he remembers it?
“Of course, I remember it very well. And today I can say that that sentence was a huge weight for me. I was pleased, they were words almost as a father, but maybe I was too young …”
“In Florence I lived an incredible stress. From the outside maybe he did not see himself, but those who were in the locker room with me realized: I was a young man who came from nothing, I was devoured by anxiety”.
Have you ever thought he could have done more in his career?
“Of course I could have done more. And if I had been less prey to stress and anxiety, if I had gone on the field free, if I had felt around me more confidence would have been able to derive from? I derived from? Take the train or … ”
Who pulled the best out of her?
“Novellino in Modena, he really treated me as his son, never like that year I had fun playing football. But even with Montella I found myself very well, there was a nice feeling”.
He also played with several champions in Florence.
“One above all: Adrian Mutu. But Salah was a real surprise, he had an incredible impact. Today one sees him as a great player, he was also when he came to Florence only that nobody expected it. And Italy is not an easy championship for a newcomer …”
If you ever imagine a trident Babacar-Chiesa-Bernardeschi in purple jersey?
“We are three children from Florence, every now and then I imagine it. But fate has separated us: there are those who went to Juve and those who did another tour”
But at some point it seemed that he should go to Inter …
“I had also made an audition as a young man at Pinetina, but we see that it was not a destiny. And I believe in fate: for me Florence was perfect”.
There has always been some obstacles between Babacar and the stratosphere. Accidents, for example: 21 career, of various kinds.
“Yes, always, from Florence to Copenhagen. When my moment came, when I started to score and find continuity I injured myself. I don’t know how and why, it always happened like this. At least three times a year, and I did not accept it because I didn’t understand it. I told her that I believe in fate, no? Here, I started thinking that my fate was this …”.
It must not be easy to live with it.
“I laughed and joked with everyone, I always smiled, but who really knew me like my prosecutor Patrick Bastianelli understood that there was something inside me that went off. He knows what it is really ugly? When you come to tell you: ‘Here, this too will not be my year’. I didn’t sleep at the night, with so many thoughts that crowded my head …”
At a certain point, the umbilical cord with Florence detaches and goes to Sassuolo.
“Yes, I went to change, to understand if it was actually the weight I led to Florence to brak me. But then there De Zerbi came to whom attackers liked by me. He wanted a 10 who does the 9, a center forward who started from behind and maneuver the ball, to the Guardiola. And so he made play in that role Boateng, even if I did more goals. the decisions of others ”
He told us about his dark side, but in the Florentine one he laughed a lot.
“Astori, Ljajic, Vargas, Gilardino, one more nice than the other. In the locker room they made jokes about jokes. Vargas hid your shoes and you didn’t find them anymore, you know how many times I went home in slippers. And if you told him to plant it and maybe it hadn’t been worse, he got angry bad. School of strength, I say more … technical.
How are you in Turkey?
“Benone, after two years spent not playing Copenhagen I went back to seeing the field continuously. We changed three coaches and it is not easy. You know, you start playing, then another comes, wants things different from what you do, and the story of the start, obstacles starts again …. luckily the current coach, Koşukavak, when he arrived he said to me: ‘But how did you be on the bench first? You ‘. In fact, we are playing the playoffs with him to go to Super Lig “.
In Italy would you come back?
“Of course, it’s my home. I would also accept Serie B, I brak the fact that I have not yet had the Italian passport after 14 years”
Balotelli feels it more?
“No, I haven’t heard of him for a lifetime. Mario you have to know him, you don’t have to see him from outside: only if you have to do that you understand what a beautiful person is. And he and I at the time we talked, we confrontation, we shared many things. But I never liked that they called me the new Balotelli: I never had anything against him, simply he had his lifestyle and I mine”.
And how is Babacar’s style?
“I am a very quiet type, never drunk or touched a cigarette. Then of course, when you are young it is normal that an evening in the disco you do it, everyone was twenty years old …. in the world it is full of people who look at what you are because they don’t want to look at what they are”.
What about Baba-Car? Camaro with leather seats with the Senegal flag he had in Florence?
“Eh, perhaps for what they started calling me new Balotelli … but I gave it away immediately. Do you think that in Modena I turned by bicycle, with the sun or the rain”.
At the Gazzetta he said that one day he wanted to be a comic actor. He confirms?
“I would like, I make people laugh, it’s an innate dowry. Even here in Turkey when I say something the others crash down. It is that I am a very shy person, I could sit for hours among the people without saying a word, and every now and then the joke helps you to make you known, not to keep you shyness with you”. After so many sighs, Babacar melts in a nice smile.
This article is based on extra -eights, newsletters on stars and foreign football stories by Giulio Di Feo, published every Friday. To subscribe and for information on the other Gazzetta newsletters, click here
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