Piero Ausilio: “I, Inter, the market, Kvara, Cudicini and ….”

There is a photo of the Pro Sesto, season 1990-91, series C1. You can see a boy, among those accidents, who cannot bend his knee and keeps him high, almost to form a corner of ninety degrees. It is Piero Ausilio, today the Sports Director of Inter, at the time young footballer yet already close to the retreat. The fault of that knee that had shattered two years earlier in a clash with Carlo Codicini, son of the great Fabio, at the time goalkeeper of the Milan boys. Then Ausilio took revenge on fate and football. And what revenge.

Ausilio, what happened that day in Pro Sesto-Milan, students category?

“I collided with Cudicini, who then became my friend, and my knee jumped me in the air: cartilage, meniscus, even ligament. I always played in the pro sixth, I started at seven years, and my career ended there. I remember, of that game, my despair and the sensitivity of Capello that then – it was the late eighties – he was the manager at Milan: he immediately came to the changing rooms. courage”.

How was the aid footballer?

“Bravo. Bravino, come on. A midfielder not fast but with head and sense of position. Did he present Cambiasso? Something like that, just a little worse”.

If he saw a Piero Ausilio today, would he lead him to Inter?

“Macché, Inter is too much. But I think I would have become a good professional, let’s say from Serie C, at most B. I was sixteen and I already trained with the first team that was in C1. And the C1 of the time was a serious matter”.

In short, he must say thanks to Cudicini: without that accident his story in football would not have been so rich in joys.

“I thanked Carlo many times when I met him (smiles). That absolutely fortuitous, random clash, for me he changed the course of positive events. Only then I didn’t know it. And I suffered.”

Did he immediately surrender to the injury?

“I fought two years: one intervention, then another. One ordeal. In the end I gave up, I didn’t even get the ligament in place: I still broke it. When I tried to play a few football game, I fell like this, and then I said enough: I no longer touched the ball”.

When did you decide to be a manager?

“At the beginning I had the bench in my head, I did the assistant of the coach of the Debutants for two years. I wanted to be close to the field, only there I felt well. I was twenty -one years old when the president of the pro Sesto, Giuseppe Peduzzi, told me a phrase that changed my life”.

“He told me: there will always be a better coach than you because you miss the experience as a footballer, but you are awake and you can take a nice path as a manager. At the beginning I didn’t take it well and I left. Then I understood that he was right. And I came back.”

He never stopped studying.

“It was the only condition posed by my parents: do what you want, but the school does not abandon itself. I became an electronic expert, a diploma and the ball was enough for me. The diploma for dad and mom, the ball for me. Then, after the injury, I had almost a electrocution and I enrolled in jurisprudence”.

He risked becoming a lawyer.

“I would say no. I made the exams all quickly but I discussed the thesis only in 2004, when I had a path started in football. That year I also became sports director”.

“Criminology. Topic: doping and calciumosmensse as a sports offense”.

In football he did everything.

“At the pro Sesto I started as an organizational manager of the youth sector together with Casiraghi, who was instead the technical manager. I was twenty years old when I started attending the transfer market and made the first contract sign a player”

Did the transfer market fascinated or intimidated it?

“I was enchanted: Mazzola, Braida, Giorgio Vitali, Perinetti, Rino Foschi, even Marotta … I was a boy, I looked at them and trying to understand. It was all different from today: we were each in our box, we made the appointments. But I started to know, speak, to build relationships”.

Until he called him Inter.

“It was ’97, Moratti asked me to go to be the secretary of the youth sector. It was only six months of the contract, I ran a small risk but I accepted. Do I know what is the first game that I followed abroad as a Nerazzurri manager? The UEFA Cup final of ’98, that of three to zero at Lazio. And I never came from here, growing gradually within the company”.

Is it not reductive to have always worked on Inter?

“But Inter was a great school, I tried everything. Included four profoundly different properties, even for nationality: the solidity and absolute competence of Moratti, the difficulties of the Thohir era, the initial uncertainties with Suning deleted from the arrival of Steven Zhang. And Oakree, now. I don’t think I miss the experiences, even if I have lived them all at Inter”.

He also worked with many sports directors, before occupying that role.

“The first to involve me was Sandro Mazzola, who took me with him to the market that worked on him. Then I worked with Oriali, with Terraneo, until the last few years alongside Marotta. I found myself well with everyone, by everyone I learned. Even if I can’t deny having had a special feeling with Marco Branca”.

He brought to Inter many great players. What is the most proud of?

“Kovacic and Brozovic, whom we chose when the manager was Branca. And then Onana, taken for free and sold to 55 million after a year. And Lautaro, Bisseck, Thuram …”.

How do you understand if a boy has the qualities of the sample?

“He helped me a lot to have worked with young people. You must be able to see if there are the fundamental qualities and if the defects can be overcome with the application and the commitment on the field. I think precisely of Kovacic, Bisseck, also Lautaro: in all of them there were imperfections, but remediable”.

What are the defects that cannot be canceled?

“The lack of desire to grow, the personality, certain athletic characteristics: if there are no engine, strength, resistance, speed, it cannot arrive at high levels”.

The most difficult operation?

“Winter market, I sell a player abroad and breath: the period for the club was very hard, we struggled to pay the salaries, that operation would have made us safe. When we are about to sign he calls me a well -known divorce lawyer: he cannot start the footballer, his wife wants the separation, we asked for the retirement of the passport. I was almost desperate: and now how do we come out of it? Everything: agreement for the player’s divorce and transfer.

The error he made?

“Kvaratskhelia. But I didn’t only make a mistake, they offered it to many great clubs in Italy. Only that we played with the 3-5-2 and he is a 4-3-3 footballer, for this we did not take it. I am used to building the teams respecting the ideas of the coach”.

Do your children love football?

“Giulia took a whole other way, deals with media language. Niccolò with her feet was not good, she soon stopped playing but she has passion: she sees a thousand games, she studied the players. When Jashari went to Milan she reproached me”.

“He told me: I recommended it when he was in the Lucerne, you made it run away. It’s true, he had reported it to me, but I replied: we can’t take all the good ones.”