Cragno also stops stuttering: “Do I stutter? Patience. My interviews give courage to those who suffer from it like me “

For Cragno, the fight against speech difficulties is an important business. And in fact the new Monza defender has decided to write about it, telling how he dealt with stuttering as a child and how he is doing it now.

Last season, the match between Empoli and Cagliari was quite a harbinger of controversy, also due to a rather unusual confrontation between two of the protagonists, Patrick Cutrone and Alessio Cragno. The attacker had been pinched on the bench to insult the opposing goalkeeper for a problem that the Tuscan has been carrying with him since he was a child: stuttering. Then the question was deflated with Cutrone’s apologies, but the fact remains that for Cragno the fight against the difficulty in speaking is an important business. And in fact the new Monza defender has decided to write about it, in a letter to Chronicles of Dressing Room simply titled “Yes, I stammer,” in which he explains how he dealt with the problem as a child and how he is doing it now.

A difficulty that arose immediately, as soon as little Alessio began to speak. “All the fault of the diaphragm. My emotional state. I tried to cure them, and I still do. I go to the speech therapist, every now and then I do a course of therapies. As an adult it is much easier. When you are 6, you take everything as a game: read, take breaks, learn to breathe correctly. You do it having fun. When you grow up you learn to listen to yourself, to manage yourself, to realize what it really takes to improve. Now I have greater awareness of what I do “.

Something that is already difficult for children to deal with, but which becomes a real nightmare when, as footballers, you start having to take part in interviews. “At the age of 16 I approached the first interviews in the Brescia First Team. You are in the square, at the presentation of the team, and you have to say something. You are the youngest, and it is the first time that you speak in front of so many people. my nightmare: the microphone. The microphone is bastard because, while you speak, you don’t hear your voice directly, but you hear it from the speakers. Tremendous. ” But not enough to give up. And in fact the ending of the letter is clear: “I’m Alessio Cragno. I stammer. Patience.”

But with his desire to take the problem head on, Cragno also managed to become a model for many other people in his same situation. “I am this: I talk, I stammer, I go live on TV and do interviews stammering. It happens that, once back in the locker room, you find some messages on Instagram: ‘Hi, I saw you, but how do you do it? I suffer from the same problem as you and I am ashamed to approach people. ‘They suffer from it, like me, or they are the parents of those children who have the same characteristics as me. They say’ thank you ‘because they see me calm and take courage “. A bit like the defenders when they see that behind them there is a goalkeeper who addresses his language problem exactly as he does with the opposing forwards: without fear.