The historian “Doc” of the Rossoneri opens the book of memories: “To give more sugars to the boys I brought the tart to Milanello. I said to Van Basten not to operate, if he had listened to me he would have given us another 2-3 years of his fantastic football”
In his imaginative chronicles, Carlo Pellegatti called him the “son of Esculapio”, in Greek Asclepio, the god of medicine. Rodolfo “Rudy” Tavana was Silvio Berlusconi’s Milan doctor, won Champions and Scudetti, diagnosed and cared for.
Dr. Tavana, in 1987 Berlusconi called it to Milan. Why exactly her?
“I was a traumatologist, I divided myself between the pro home of Athletics and the cross -country skiing national team. I had gone to update myself in the USA, between San Antonio Spurs (Basket NBA, ed) and Dallas Cowboys (American football, edotball). Milan had Dr. Monti as a doctor, very good, but Berlusconi wanted to create a 360 -degree health facility and chose me, among eight, Candidates, for the figure of director of the area.
Did you introduce the famous tart to Milanello, who had so much discussed, to increase sugars?
“Yes, Berlusconi himself had amazed that everyone ate what he seemed to him. He had to fix rules. The tart was eaten in a snack and in the prepared lunches, but Berlusconi imposed other novelties. For example, every doctor, from me to the colleagues of the youth sector, had to be found once a week. There were no cell phones and gave us a Cicalino. And to call a Fininvest switchboard that informed you about the emergency intervention requested by this or that player, for himself or for a family member.
Liedholm, the coach that Berlusconi found himself in Milanello when he bought the club, did not seem enthusiastic about modernization.
“He was skeptical, but in 1988, on the occasion of Sacchi’s Scudetto, he said that we had won because we had introduced a new sports medicine. Dr. Monti told me that in the football preceding the figure of the athletic trainer he appeared in the summer retreat and then disappeared, which today seems lunar. One hundred of the injuries related to football, because wear is inevitable.
An anecdote about Arrigo Sacchi, the coach who first made everything win at the Berlusconi Milan?
“On Wednesday, Arrigo worked on the super speed with the downhill sprints. I told him that in Atletica they had abandoned them for the risk of ironing and tears. Arrigo replied that that work guaranteed him excellent rhythms in the game. Shortly after, during a downhill shot, Evani was injured by the flexors and bags abandoned this methodology”.
“He had been a player, he understood all the dynamics, but for me his figure remains linked to the Champions League final against Barcelona, in 1994, in Athens. A few days earlier, at the Milan bar, a journalist had made this joke, who had arrived in the locker room: ‘Milan would do better not to present himself, he would lose only for 2-0 at the table’. Then the Gazzetta published a photo of Crui (The coach of Barça, editor’s note) with the cup in his hand. He scored a goal and spent the night in bed for a very strong headache, from post victory stress. “
We are talking about Marco Van Basten, who retired at 30. She was against the ankle operation weakened by the assignment of the cartilage.
“I oppose the first operation, by Professor Marti, in Sankt Moritz, Switzerland. Professor Martens then intervened, to repair the damage. Van Basten in his book (Fragileed) writes that the surgeon had told him that in two months he would return to the field and that he believed him. And then he adds that everyone opposed to Milan. I fought to the last. Marti wanted to clean the cartilage, I said to Marco that it was not necessary to remove that minimum of protection that had remained. Nothing to do and I’m sorry, because he could have given himself and give us two or three years of his fantastic football. Van Basten was a born sportsman. When he moved to golf, he arrived at Handicap 3. Once he went to ski, what never done before, and and the teacher told him that he already wore as if he had taken twenty lessons. He had the natural ability to learn any motor gesture. Marco remains my biggest regret. “
Did Milan players behave well?
“Exemplary professionals, there is no trace of nocturnal stars. Sometimes, I went to the restaurants where I knew they were for dinner and I was inquiring about what they had eaten: never a rude, even in the outings they followed the guidelines of our nutritionist”.
“One evening he telephones me: ‘Doc, I have a pain’. We are in the week of Naples-Milan of 1 May 1988 (the game that will actually deliver to Milan the first Scudetto of the Berlusconi era, editor’s note) and I worry: ‘Ruud, come to my house, in via Novara’. Gullit arrives, I visit him, as well as he has nothing serious and I say to him: I stop for dinner. Two dachshunds bite Ruud to a pulp. Gullit comes out all smiling and without a bandage: ‘Doc, it was a joke!’ “.
“In my second time to Milan, the team celebrated a goal imitating my thoughtful walk, with her hands tied behind the back. They turned to me, laughed. The day after the Gazzetta he published the photo and in the caption there was talk of a mysterious exultation”.
She also had to do with the devastated knees of Robi Baggio.
“Serious professional, it was obvious that for him a certain part of the work was differentiated. Before training, he underwent a routine of exercises for the knees. He was very popular, especially in the East. I remember a friendly in Asia, the stadium everything for him sang his surname by crippling him: ‘Baggchio!'”.
In his second time to Milan, between 2011 and 2017, Antonio Cassano saved his life.
“Landed in Malpensa, returning from a trip to Rome, Thiago Silva came to me: ‘Doctor, Cassano is not well, he is confused’. Dr. Mazzoni and I traced him to the parking lot. He wanted to go home with his car. We made him basic neurological tests, there was something wrong. I said to him: ‘Sali, but your car will lead you, Dr. Mazzoni will lead you. At the polyclinic ‘. He forced me to obey ‘.
Other times did he have to impose himself on a player?
“On Leonardo, for a head injury: ‘Doctor, I am fine and I stay in the field’. ‘I said to him:’ No, you go out and take you to the Niguarda ‘. Leonardo still does not remember the way in an ambulance. A similar thing happened to me with Donnarumma: he took a blow in the head, he did not want to go out. We joke. When we went to Wolverhampton, England, with Turin, I was struck by that there was a room with a doctor deputy to check the players gradually struggling with the trauma to the head.
Traumas in general are suspected to be a concausal of the air of SLA, the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, which hit and killed many players …
“Among them Stefano Borgonovo, whom I had at Milan. I do not believe in a direct correlation between football and Sla, the numbers do not tell us this. There is a study that underlines a wider thing: the ALS is more frequent among those who carry out jobs of great effort”.
After Milan, in 2017, he was in Turin.
“With President Urbano Cairo, whom I had known since Milan, because he worked with Berlusconi. I always say: the bull had technically failed, Cairo saved him and brought him back to Serie A. In my years to Turin, he was always present, he wanted to have the situation under control, a bit like Berlusconi at Milan. At the Taurus I was well”.
She was medical consultant by Pietro Ferrero, who died in South Africa, in Cape Town, during a bicycle exit, his passion.
“Pietro had met him because of a battered ankle of his ankle, I had taken care of it in Milan. Then he had looked for me because at the Ferrero di Alba he wanted to create a line of drinks and foods for children who play sports. The child passes the morning at school, in the afternoon he has sport and must eat and drink accordingly. Pietro died at 49 years of age from a genetic cardiac anomaly, which had not been cultured by the exams for the sports. Pedalized in his Langhe, he was followed by a minibus with the defibrillator.
Fatality as an element of life. Is it true that Berlusconi’s Milan could have dissolved in flight, as happened to the Great Turin?
“At the end of September 1987, we played on the neutral field of Lecce a match of the UEFA Cup against Gijon (3-0 victory, editor’s note). We returned to Milan on an ATR 42. That same plane, with the same crew, two weeks later crashed on a mountain of the Comasco, while in flight from Linate to Cologne (37 victims, ed.).
© RESERVED REPRODUCTION