Over 50 years of career as manager at the highest levels. “I started with Herrera, brought me to the bench as a gift I delayed a gearbox, Ancelotti fell into it but Juve scored goals. Football helped me not to think”
Giorgio Perinetti is one of those experienced sports managers, old style, masters of a football that in more than 50 years of career has seen himself transforming himself. A life to chase the ball immediately after graduating from the classical high school with De Sica and Verdone. Between successes, delicate situations – as when he touched him the task of communicating to Maradona the disqualification for what was technically considered “doping” -, volcanic presidents, satisfactions. And pain. A constant in the last years of personal life: first the disappearance of his wife (in 2015 at 49 years old), then the even more devastating one of his daughter Emanuela taken away from anorexia. An infimal disease for which Perinetti cannot give peace. But at the same time he turned on an alarm bell, because now the goal of the former DS of Rome, Naples and Juve has become to avoid similar cases.
“What I haven’t seen come” is the book he wrote about his daughter. Did he convince himself immediately?
“At first, even speaking with my other daughter of mine, Chiara, I was reluctant. Then it was painful to relive everything, but in a certain sense it gave me support. I hope to put the theme of eating disorders in the spotlight: after the disappearance of my daughter, the doctor who cared for her told me that she had made her history read to another patient. And so she accepted shelter. This was my push”.
An intelligent girl, who had everything. Surviving a child is something unnatural, losing it in this way was devastating
Can you survive today?
“I was not lucky: first I lost my wife, then Emanuela. An intelligent girl, who had everything. Surviving a son is something unnatural, losing her in this way was devastating. I have to thank Chiara who gave me strength. We are staying two. Every time we meet, we start with long silences. Moments in which we live intensely the memory of the people we have lost”.
Did you stop feeling guilty?
“No. A parent of faults gives a thousand, he does thousands of questions, he cannot find answers. I always look back, when my daughter asked me to invent something together. I interpreted this request as a diminutio for her, certainly not for me. And instead they were just requests for help. updated “.
Emanuela has always been interested in football.
“As a child, with her mother he came to see the game. Not to speak he looked at me with implier eyes and then I asked her if he wanted to return by bus to Trigoria with his dad or a house with his mother. He always sat in the arms at Aldair”.
Is there something in particular that helped her not to think?
“Football. It is after my wife’s disappearance, when I accepted Venice a month later, and after that of my daughter, between Avellino and Athletic Palermo, chosen because I wanted to close where I started from: young guys to whom to give a dream. It is necessary to keep my head occupied”.
I did the classic with Verdone and De Sica, with Carlo we still feel every day
Returning to her, he shared the adolescence with two well -known characters …
“I made the classical high school at the Nazarene Institute in Rome, the last two years in class with Verdone and De Sica. Carlo I still feel it daily, with Christian we were a little lost. They were joints, I didn’t … but how many jokes to the professors with Verdone”.
His beginning in football?
“With Roma, in Ostia, friendly against the National Amateur. I was 22 years old and I was the manager of the youth sector. It was my birthday, then I prayed to a superior to give me a place sitting next to Herrera. So the magician calls me: ‘Vamos, fast, on the bench’. A dream.”
“Ferlaino asked me to communicate to Maradona the disqualification for the use of cocaine. I went to his house, I spoke to him, Diego brought a hand on his side and said only ‘it is not possible …’, with a grimace of physical pain on the face that I will never forget”.
And the period to Juve?
“I’ll tell her an anecdote. We were in Athens for Olympiacos-Juve of Champions League. Not a very bright moment, we played the qualification but we were losing. Ancelotti tells me that he wants to put Fonseca in place of Conte, I mess with the blackboard and I lose time. The coach gets angry, the change delays … and Conte makes goals. said of waiting! ‘.
And it was she who launched Conte coach …
“I considered him a predestined. He was the captain of Juve, he played in midfield, Deschamps, Davids and Zidane, but Antonio imposed himself on the champions through the character. So I thought he would become a great coach. But my great discovery as a coach is another: after the Champions League final he lost from Rome to penalties in 84, replaced Liedholm with Eriksson. Lazio, but in Italy I took it “.
The greatest satisfaction and the worst disappointment?
“Both still tied to Eriksson. The Italian Cup won with him on the Rome bench was the deepest joy, the disappointment instead having left a Scudetto to Juventus because of a defeat at home against Lecce. I was very young, win a championship at 34 years old … Today I would never have lost that game. But it is a defeat that taught me more than every victory”.
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