Giancarlo De Sisti, interview: Roma, Fiorentina, the national team, life

In the diagram of the soul of Picchio De Sisti the mild music of those who practice the exercise of the measure, the noblest of the virtues, sounds the mild music. At eighty -two years old the man whose nickname derives from an ancient game that refers to the sunny courtyards of the village of Borgata – the woodpecker is a wooden cone linked to a nail with the string – consider everything in the world how to look at the lops of the lump of the top, with the enchantment of the child and the serenity of those who found in maturity a nice place to stay.

De Sisti, what balance does his life?

“I was a little boy from the Quadraro, I arrived at the final of the World Cup at the Aztec against the Brazil of Pelé: and who would have even dreamed of him? At school I was a bell, kicking a ball I became commander of the Republic. I have been married to my wife Nadia for fifty years, we have three children and six grandchildren. At fifty years I risked dying, but he won my life. lucky”.

It all started with her mother who feared her cold.

“My father bought the ball me, she pierced him with the knife. I always came back from the oratory all sweaty. My mother imposed the aut aut:” or you find a team that has a stripper with a shower or stop with football “. My father led me to Mario Forlivesi, from there I went to Rome in exchange for a wetsuit of eleven stitches and the promise that would have given me to eat at least one steak a day. They said: “They also paid you too”.

At Rome she meets her myth, pepper slap.

“He taught me everything. He sent me the ability to intercept the ball. He said to me:” You have to have a radar in the head, when the opponent advances not to be in a hurry, if you look up you fix it in the eyes. If he also has the ball, he must understand that the master of the situation is you “”.

Nineteen years of Serie A and only two teams, Rome and Fiorentina.

“Rome is home, Florence became it. I went to Fiorentina that I was 22 years old, Roma needed to make cash, there had been the collection of the fans at the Sistine Theater. A few tear Versai, but the Florentines welcomed me as if I were a real player (he says so:” Real player “: the humility of De Sisti). After the debut, President Baglini took me to Milan, Industrials: he wanted to show me, like a new watch.

In Florence in 1969 he won the Scudetto.

“It was the Fiorentina Yè-Yè of Pesaola, we went very strong. The Petisso loved me. One day I ask him if please I can skip the afternoon training for a commitment to the tax office.” Piccio, she did not understand a casso “. I look at him amazed. And” Piccio, here he commands her, here he is all in his hand “. He was heard to make us feel invincible. I speak, because 50 percent is truth and 50 percent lie. And you must be good at distinguishing “.

He will also have fun with Nils Liedholm in Rome.

“Everything in him was fantasy mixed with reality. One day in the locker room we are commenting Nino Welcome by Monzon. The Baron snorts and tells that once in Norrkoping, where he played, he saw a man, a kind of giant, who was about to rape a girl, so he approached:” With his right hand raised twenty centimeters from the ground and with his left hand given Upperc coma twenty days “”.

What are the best years of his life?

“1966 I get married, 1967 My first daughter was born, 1968 we win the European at the Olimpico, 1969 Scudetto with Fiorentina, 1970 I play the World Cup final against Brazil’s strongest ever: (laughs, ed.) There was from Svenì”.

The best crossed players?

“Supernatural Pelé, slap a teacher, Beckenbauer Regale, Overath a champion. I played with Riva, the best. Mazzola and Rivera, Merlo and Hamrin, also John Charles at Rome. I trained Antognoni and Pecci, two champions”.

As a coach of Fiorentina in 1981-82 he touched the Scudetto.

“As a magnasis my hands, I consider it a theft. I trained little, in 1984 I risked dying from a dental sub-abscess, I suffered a brain intervention. I went back, but it was no longer as before. That problem had penalized me, but I thought: I’m alive. What did it count to win or lose a game?”.

On the bench he was not lucky. After Florence, a year and a half at Udinese in Serie A, then a four-year-old stand-by, 17 games with Ascoli in 1991-92. He was not even fifty years old, but since then nothing, no bench. She disappeared. It was said that it was Luciano Moggi who closed all the doors.

“Yes, Moggi was a consultant and friend of Costantino Rozzi, the president of Ascoli (in ’91 -’92 Moggi was general manager of Turin, editor’s note). That year they were strange things. On the eve of a game with Juventus, Rozzi said to a journalist who had never met a serious and capable man like me. We lost, the fans kicked his car, Rozzi accused me with absurd statements, Digos imposed me the escort.