Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
“THEMany have told me that towards the end he wanted to be alone with me, to try to live with me as much as possible. He felt that he didn’t have much time left and he always took me with him. I have a clear memory of the house in Bologna, on the hills. There was this gigantic attic, just for me, with all the games imaginable. And then there was the dog Rudi, who grew up next to me. At night I couldn’t fall asleep without having my father’s hand in mine. I had a physical need for that squeeze and when he was gone I fell asleep in the same way with my uncles. I miss that hand so much. I still don’t sleep if I don’t hug a heart-shaped pillow. And if I go to the hotel, I always ask for one more, to be able to tighten it. It is the memory of him that I carry within me, even now. He had beautiful hands.’
They were the hands of a goalkeeper. The Napoli goalkeeper of the second championship: Giuliano Giuliani. The only Italian sportsman who died of AIDS, at least as far as we know.
In America they had Magic Johnson, the great basketball player: he is still alive, surrounded by a wave of popular affection. Giuliani experienced the disease alone. It doesn’t matter where he contracted it, perhaps in Argentina, in the immoderate celebrations for Maradona’s wedding.
The fact remains that the world of football has left him alone, it’s over with his wife, the last few years have been an ordeal: he didn’t resign himself to living without football, he took the field as HIV positive, with a broken knee.
“Giuliano Giuliani, more alone than a goalkeeper” by Paolo Tomaselli (66thand2nd editions).
A story that would be forgotten today, if one of our excellent colleagues from the Corriere della Sera, Paul Tomasellihad not told it in a poignant book: Giuliano Giuliani, more alone than a goalkeeper (published by a publishing house I did not know and has the name of a New York address: 66thand2nd).
And in the end only his daughter, Gessica, remained to alleviate the loneliness. Read his testimony, which closes the book, and you cannot help but be moved.
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