“I have always trained to win, with the group rather than with the schemes.” Memories, successes, characters and colleagues. Face to face with the coach of Berlin 2006 who won the Champions League ’96 with Vialli and Del Piero’s Juventus: “Two extraordinary guys”
When the boys start training, under the sudden February sun, he can no longer take his eyes off the field. “The call of the ball is too strong”, he says, smiling at a friend next to him. Cutlet and potatoes can cool down calmly: Marcello Lippi follows the dribbles, the sprints, the shots. He scans the bench, his kingdom, from where he dragged the “Team” to victory. The teams. Over a thousand times in his career, from Pontedera to China. Mrs. Simonetta is always nearby, she talks about the endless month in Germany, in 2006, with the other wives: “One day I saw some bracelets at a flea market and I bought them. There were thirty of them. We all wore them until the final…”. In Coverciano, at the end of training, Lippi took off his shoes and socks and kicked barefoot, often himself against Gattuso, the others applauding: “I never felt pain, as a boy I was used to playing games on the beach…”. Matches on the beach and on the fields of the pine forest, when he played for the Red Star of Viareggio. A nice boy who dreamed of Serie A and would have gone much further. The synthetic pitch is at Marco Polo, the sports center launched in 2019 with his son Davide. Viareggio plays here and today aims for Excellence. From the name, it is clear that China has remained within him: Lippi has opened an international route that will never close, even if today Beijing and Shanghai, football-wise, are in crisis. Probably even down there one day they will see “Now I win”, the docufilm by Simone Herbert Paragnani and Paolo Geremei which tells his life through the voices of the protagonists, family, players, friends. Only the sea of Viareggio has a power of attraction as strong as a balloon. While the photographer films him on the beach, people look, wave, shout “come on, Marcello!”. A nostalgic and fascinating journey into the life of one of the greatest coaches of all time, today husband, father, grandfather, world champion.