Silvano Martina: “Me, Buffon, Dzeko, Antognoni, The market and …”

Silvano Martina is a man who during his life has not only worn the goalkeeper cheeks, but also many different clothes. At school as a child he went directly without because of poverty in Yugoslavia, as a boy he risked being exchanged with a horse and then, by many, unfortunately he is still remembered as “the one who risked killing Antognoni”. Although the former Viola himself has always taken his defenses.

Martina, his is a particular story….

“I was among the first non -EU citizens in Italy: my dad from Friuli, my mom Bosnian. In ’65 we didn’t go well to Sarajevo and my father jokingly said to my mother: ‘We go to Italy, so much worse than that …’. They were absolute misery times: I went to school in underpants, bare chest with only the folder on the shoulders. Toni Bacchetti noticed me and took me to Inter. “

In Bosnia he was a friend of Dzeko’s father.

“We lived at 150 meters and played football together. Years after Milan he drew Edin and thought he was his son: I called myth and resumed friendship. In 2015, Sabatini tells me that he needs a strong striker if not in Rome they would massacred him. We left by car from Milan to close “.

Is it true that he risked being sold in exchange for a horse?

“I was not present at the negotiation, but Sogliano (Riccardo, ed) had sold me from Varese to Sant’Angelo Lodigiano in exchange for a horse. But then I stayed and I made an incredible season. By the way, I tell her an anecdote. In ’78 I was from Genoa: I knew I would go to Atalanta, but one morning reading the Gazzetta I discover that I was done with Varese. Immediately on site to protest, but bands (Varese coach, editor’s note) asks me an appointment.

The sorry that his name is always associated with the accident with Antognoni?

“He doesn’t disturb me or surprise me. Antognoni behaved like a great gentleman. I could never have hurt him: the ball beats on the line line, he aims to climb over, slips and the impact between my leg and his head arrives. It was the only case in the world in which an athlete went to trial and there was a public prosecutor who was more purple fan that I was very sorry, colleague “.

Did he immediately realize gravity?

“There and there, the referee did not even whistle foul. I was not used to all that clamor, the next week in training I was unwatchable, so much so that I told Gigi Simoni to leave me off. He replied sending me on the pitch.”

And he was right: a week later …

“Genoa-Ascoli, after 20 ‘paro a penalty and changes my head: from that moment on, nobody was able to score me. At the time the Gazzetta made a statistics on the players’s media-vote, better than me there was not even Maradona. Only Platini”.

What coach was Simoni for you?

“He said he wouldn’t change me even with Zoff. I excited me when, reading his book, I discovered that he considered me the best goalkeeper ever trained together with Pagliuca”.

Antognoni returned to the field 4 months later, in Genoa-Fiorentina.

“There was great anticipation, 100 ready photographers. We seemed Trump and Putin! The game ended 0-0. In reality, when I went to find Giancarlo in the hospital I told him: ‘The first time you meet me you will go to me’. It happened to the second, a nice 3-0 viola with his goal. He could have told me of everything and I would have understood it, instead he was always a gentleman”.

Another historical game, Naples-Genoa 1982. Grifone Salvo, Milan in B.

“All the San Paolo sang for Genoa, we played life. 5 ‘from the end, at the goalkeeper of Napoli the ball runs away in the corner, affair is inserted and goal: Genoa Salvo, Milan in B. but there was no bad faith. We returned to Genoa and it was as if we had won the Champions League with 10,000 people at the airport”.

His story with Turin, on the other hand?

“The only small regret: in 1985 we could have won the Scudetto instead of Verona, instead we came second. The difference made the goalkeepers: Garella from 9, I from 7.5. Then I was injured and in fact I stopped playing”.

“The representative of electronic cabins, despite not understanding anything. Then during Turin-Lazio I went to greet bands (which in the meantime became a technical of Lazio, editor’s note). He said to me: ‘Train, you never know’. Two months later he called me back to: ‘Come to Lazio’. I thought I needed a third goalkeeper, instead I made an amazing season as a starter and brought back the team in A”.

Before dedicating herself to the career as a prosecutor …

“The biggest ever followed is obviously Buffon, a friend. The most beautiful anecdote that binds us leads me to when he left Juve. I went to visit him in Vinovo, Gigi asked me what he could have done more. And ‘If tomorrow I’ll take you an offer of Real or PSG?’