The former defender of Samb, Verona, Bologna and Lazio tells his story: “I know I don’t have much left. An anonymous person said that I knew where they kept Emanuela and in 1978 in those derailed carriages there were corpses everywhere. I hated injustice, now football rejects me”
No “nomen omen” was so mocking. Arcadio Spinozzi never found his Arcadia, manifesto of peace and purity. He chased her all his life, just touching her. A naked and raw scorer who passed through Sambenedettese, Verona, Bologna and Lazio, he found everything on his path: at 18 he risked dying from too much stress, at 25 he was involved in a train accident that cost the lives of 48 people, at 30 he was anonymously brought up on the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi. Now 72 years old, he has retired to Tortoreto, in Abruzzo, the seaside town where he grew up and where he is fighting cancer.
“I’ve been going like this since 2009, now it’s back in a more aggressive form and with metastases. In the last three months I’ve had 35 radiotherapy sessions. They’ll have to remove my bladder, but I hope to save at least one of the two kidneys. I have to understand, but I’m honest: I don’t have long to live.”
Is there anyone to help her?
“I live with my daughter, she is 28 years old, she has been with me since her mother passed away, but our relationship is not the best. I have not been a model father, so to speak. But my condition has worsened.”
“I have already looked death in the face twice. The first time I was not yet 20 years old, I was playing Sambenedetesse and I was consumed by stress. I lived in Tortoreto, I went to school in Giulianova and I trained in San Benedetto. I returned home late at night.”
“Never, not even on Sundays. The only train to San Benedetto was at 6.10 in the morning. I got up at 5.15. A life to the limit driven by the passion for football, but suddenly I felt more and more tired, hot, weak. I was admitted to three different hospitals and I stopped playing. I had become a skeleton, I often thought I wouldn’t wake up.”
“I went to a psychiatric hospital and a doctor understood: ‘It’s just stress’. He advised my parents to take me to the mountains. I started walking again, living and playing with Samb. It was 1975. After a couple of years, Verona, in Serie A, bought me.”
Another disaster occurred there: the Murazze di Vado accident, where 48 people died. She and all of Verona were saved by a miracle.
“It had been raining for three days, we were going to Rome. Part of a landslide had ended up on the tracks and the other train, a Bari-Milan twenty hours late, derailed. We were playing cards and the conductor sent us to lunch in the first shift, in another carriage. Those on the second all died. That conductor saved our lives. A quarter of an hour later and we would have been dead.”
Do you feel like a survivor?
“Yes, my mind was elsewhere. There was mud and corpses everywhere. I went out with only one shoe, full of mud, to reach the motorway. Once help was called, I lay down in the middle of the lanes. There were mutilated bodies between the sheets of metal, with their eyes open. The trainer had a broken arm and was covered in blood. Getting out was hard.”
In 1980 he arrived at Lazio, where the fans still love him.
“Because I have never been a pimp. I was seen as a trade unionist, in the front row against Moggi and Sbardella because of broken promises. An… anomalous locker room. Some competed to see who had the best gun. But lies came out in the newspapers and on TV. They called us mercenaries, they wrote that we didn’t care, but they were artfully fabricated lies. I’m taciturn, but I can’t stand injustice. I clashed with Moggi because he wanted sell me to Cavese, I said no and he published in the newspapers that I had asked for unreasonable sums. I said I wouldn’t play anymore.”
What was it you didn’t like about Moggi?
“I never heard him tell the truth. He went to dinner with strange people: people from the Vatican, from the Guardia di Finanza…”.
How do you explain the story of Emanuela Orlandi?
“In 1983 someone sent a letter to Ansa in Milan. I always thought that the Lazio managers were behind it.”
“Because it was sent from Bari during a national team match. They were all there, but never mind. It was written that I knew where they had taken it. The consequences were enormous, I even asked Pertini for help: I was threatened with death, they said they would make me disappear. They say they mentioned my name to target Bruno Giordano, my teammate and ex-husband of Sabrina Minardi, lover of Enrico De Pedis, a leading figure of the Banda della Magliana, for me it was revenge for make me pay.”
“Football betrayed me,” he said years ago.
“I reported what was happening. They rigged matches, broadcasts, slow motion, referees. I carry a burden called conscience. I no longer coached because of the real criminals. It took me 12 years to get my license with full marks. I won a Primavera Italian Cup with Udinese, I was a scout for Juve, but never a phone call. In 2000 I coached in Ghana because no one called me anymore.”
And what defender were you?
“Someone who bludgeoned you and was on top of you. In 1984 I marked Paolo Rossi in a Juve-Lazio match. He had just scored 3 goals against Mexico. He didn’t touch the ball.”
“Like the big head I am, I would do it all again, even if the system killed me. Now I just hope to continue living for as long as possible.”
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