They trained him. They played it. They watched it grow. Five soccer men tell the story of the Inter midfielder’s beginnings. “He was not the one with the most talent, but he had a ferocious desire and he did not stop running”. Like today
If a good morning starts in the morning, that Nicolò Barella would become a soon-to-be one is understood immediately. “I was friends with his uncle Pino, who had a house in the countryside. With the family, on Saturdays we went to eat with him and then kicked the ball four times at the nearby pitch. There was this little boy, he must have been three or four years old, who would get in the way and frolic from side to side without ever stopping. He ran after the ball and always wanted it around, like all children do. But woe to him if his team lost: he got very angry. To educate him about defeat, Pino occasionally whispered to me: “Come on, let’s make him lose”. The problem is that then that planted a mess that would tear your ears out “.