Spalletti: “Vialli a great person and a great player, no people as happy and melancholic as those of Naples”
The coach of the national team
Revelations and pebbles out of the shoes in the book in which he told his life. Italy awaits the qualifiers after the sensational absences at the last two World Cups
Luciano Spalletti says he didn't give space to acidity and nastiness in the book he wrote about his life and career: Il paradiso esiste … ma quanto sforza (Heaven exists … but how much effort ), written with Giancarlo Dotto and published by Rizzoli. An ascending parabola from the provincial fields and the lower leagues to important places like Roma and Inter , sublimated by the victory of the third Scudetto in the history of Napoli and consecrated by his arrival on the bench of the National team . "It was a long climb, to get to the National team. When you start from down there, from the clay courts, not from the famous teams, without having the structure, without knowledge of a world that you saw far away, the steps are always high and steep".
He spoke about his book in an interview with Corriere della Sera . He started playing in the Avane children's team, he was rejected by Fiorentina. He played in Volterrana, Castelfiorentino, Cuoiopelli, Entella Chiavari, Viareggio, Empoli. He never played in Serie A, at most in Serie C1 . His father who had a thousand jobs, his mother in a company. His brother Marcello, the one he thought was really good at playing football, died of cancer in May 2019.
“I have been to many clubs, many cities, but I have never seen, in many years, a people who can be so happy and so melancholic as the Neapolitans . For this I will always be grateful to President De Laurentiis for having made me have that experience. Then it ended badly and I am sorry. I suffered because after the championship the president did not call any of us, he did not make us rejoice on an open bus together with those wonderful people. I love Naples and Napoli. And now I hope that the city can be happy many more times”.
If not bitterness and nastiness, the opportunity to get a few things off his chest that have already caused quite a bit of discussion has not gone unnoticed. For example, the boos at the Olimpico in Rome on the day of Francesco Totti's farewell to football, after the coach was described as the main enemy of the Roma captain. "He is football, for me. Instinct, class, pure intelligence. When I trained him, it reassured me to think that my future depended on those feet. And I would like, now that everything is clear between us, for us to think about some professional experience, even outside of football, to do together".
Italy is expected to qualify for the 2026 World Cup , after the bitter disappointment of not participating in the World Cups in Russia and Qatar. Spalletti acknowledged that he had burdened the players with too much responsibility in last year's disappointing European Championship, a group that was still considerably less gifted and talented than a tradition that boasts four World Cups in its palmares. And he remembered Gianluca Vialli : "A great player and a great person. Just look at how he faced evil. I only played against him once, in a Sampdoria-Spezia. He was strong. He gave me two hard slaps, but then he helped me get back up right away. There, his way of living, and dying, helps us get back up, always."
l'Unità
