We will play Milan-Juventus in the light of two centenarians. Federico Chiesa balanced between homeland and Lady
Antonio Mirante showed up at Milanello one morning in October 2021, climbed a tree and, in fact, never came down again, exactly like Cosimo, the protagonist of “The Baron in the Trees”, the famous novel by Italo Calvino. The protagonist, Cosimo, proud and stubborn, 12 years old, argues with his father because he doesn’t want to eat a plate of snails, climbs into the branches of the family villa and promises never to set foot on the ground again. He will keep his promise. Moving from tree to tree, Cosimo will fall in love, make a revolution, meet Napoleon, study, write to Voltaire… Mirante’s tree is called a bench. In reality, Antonio once put his foot on the ground, last June, against Verona, but it was just a minute’s walk, just a minute at the end of Milan-Verona, on the day of Ibra’s official farewell. Just a minute on the fringes of the big story, for the rest he spent his life among the branches of Milanello and watched it flow from above, like Cosimo. He saw his Milan win and celebrate a scudetto, he saw Tonali leave and Pulisic arrive, he witnessed derbies won and derbies lost, he saw Giroud play goalkeeper in his place. Perhaps he understood things that others missed, because, as Cosimo explains: “Whoever wants to look closely at the earth must keep the necessary distance”.