The agent, son of the former coach: “He avoided the controversies of Calciopoli. Before saying yes to Juve he went to the grave of his socialist and anti-Agnelli grandfather. That coat until May and that plaster for good luck”
“How is dad? Is everything okay?” And I said: “‘Yes, good, good, but can’t we talk about the players?’. I’m starting my first transfer market and for the sporting directors I’m Lippi’s son, not Davide the agent. It’s not easy. I don’t want to say that I haven’t found open doors thanks to my name. Afterwards, however, no one gave me anything and I did it on my own.” Davide Lippi is an established agent and founded Reset Group which he manages with his friend and partner Carlo Diana: an agency that deals with transfers but also with enhancing the image of footballers and, for some years, also of athletes from other important sports. It all begins when dad Marcello gave him the most difficult speech of his life.
You are twenty years old, you play football in C2, you want to become a footballer but…
“I’m about to go to C1, it’s the end of the season, May, and dad calls me to the beach in Viareggio. He looks a little sad. ‘Look, there would be a unique opportunity for professional growth at Juve, as a manager, but of course you couldn’t play anymore…’. A hard blow. But how: my father, the “legend”, as I call him, telling his son to stop”.
“I get angry. I feel bad about it. I think about it for a week. Then I make up my mind and say yes, even if I don’t speak to him for months. I’m going to Turin to live at a friend’s house, not with him. But he was also right about this… training. I don’t know where I would have gotten by playing, not at the level I’m at as an agent.”
Marcello acted as a father by taking on a terrible responsibility towards his son.
“He wasn’t always physically present but he didn’t make us miss anything. I understand perfectly, because he dedicated himself to the job of coaching with all of himself and, in these cases, you leave something on the street: the blanket is short on one side. But he wasn’t absent, he passed on his values to us and then there was another champion, mother, to do for her and for him.”
Do you remember him as a player?
“Very little because I was very young, I was born in ’77 and he stopped in ’82. Mum took me to the stadium and said: ‘Look, dad is the one…’. Samp, Pistoiese, Lucchese, the first clubs as a coach, I couldn’t support a team that was already changing the following year. I watched the videos from the time again: he was a classic libero, one meter behind the defence, very strong in the head and with a great personality. Like on the bench”.
“First” as coach at Pontedera.
“He didn’t want to continue with the young people. Sports director Nelso Ricci always called home and didn’t even say ‘hello, I’m…’ but ‘Marcellooooo’, with his big voice. And I said: ‘One moment, one moment, I’ll call him’…”.
Siena, Cesena, and the first exemptions.
“Always on the seventeenth matchday, Siena and Cesena. A bit of superstitious thoughts come. He is like that sometimes. One season he coaches with a beige coat until May. Another, at Juve, after an injury, he puts a plaster on his finger every Sunday, he never takes it off. But the superstitious one is Moggi.”
Let’s talk about another football.
“In Siena he lives in the Torre district: he has a bottle green Volvo, we go to visit him from Viareggio with the express train, the bus that took I don’t know how many hours. However, I don’t forget Lugaresi, the president of Cesena who communicated his dismissal to him in tears: ‘I wouldn’t have wanted it,’ he tells him. Dad had been a gentleman with him.”
“He had given his word that he would stay, Atalanta arrived immediately afterwards but he didn’t give in. He would have gone to Bergamo anyway but afterwards, a great Atalanta with Ganz, Rambaudi, Perrone and Montero, a lifelong friend. Towards the end of the season he doesn’t like them talking to Prandelli and he leaves. To Napoli.”
Let’s take a trip together, alone, to Brazil, looking for names. Never done this before, it’s beautiful”
“City and team where he would have liked to return. He lives in Posillipo, Discesa Gaiola, he has a small apartment overlooking the sea, a ladder that reaches into the water and in the evening, while he smokes a cigar, fishermen pass by and say to him: ‘Ué, mistér, iamme a piscare’. And he went. The club is in difficulty, the players put it in default, but it gets to the UEFA Cup.”
Moggi calls him to Juventus and…
“And he goes to the grave of his grandfather, an old anti-Agnelli Tuscan socialist, to apologize because he accepts. Does he understand our family values?”.
You can tell from his resignation as champion coach after the World Cup.
“I want to leave Gea, I don’t feel gratified, but dad tells me: ‘Not now, you don’t leave the boat in the storm’. He never told me, but he leaves the national team to protect me, with the pain inside because he would have stayed and the players wanted him. There’s Calciopoli, my name is easy to get involved. Maybe he would have also won the European Championship, he prefers to be a dad than the coach, then he makes the mistake of coming back two years later.”
Not the only time he has to choose between his son and his job.
“He always chooses me. In 2016 they want me as the national team director but then they realize that I’m an agent and it’s not possible: incompatibility. Meh. He goes to talk to the guarantor about the opportunities and says to him: ‘But then the notary can’t have a notary son?’. Nothing to be done. Besides, he’s never had an interest in my work. In fact, he tells me straight away when I start.”
“‘Davide, look, I will never take one of your players from one of my clubs’. He keeps his word, in fact, there is one, he’s Brocchi. The only one. When he goes to Guangzhou, however, I tell him: ‘Dad, that’s enough of this story. You can have one of my players’. Let’s take Elkeson who becomes a capital gain of 17 million for the club, in addition to being a great striker. And we take a trip together, alone, to Brazil, looking for names. Never done before, it’s beautiful. He also meets Pelè, his idol.
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