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00:00 I have a great memory of Paolo Rossi.
00:03 He was not only a great teammate, but he was also a great friend of mine off the pitch.
00:09 I had several opportunities to understand how much he was loved by the people.
00:15 This convinced me that as a sportsman he managed to unite the people of a nation.
00:21 He was really a great person, a great character and a great friend.
00:29 The voice that Paolo Rossi speaks of does not come from the Spanish World Cup.
00:33 It does not come from the fasts of Pablito del Sarrià , Camp Nou or Bernabeu.
00:38 But, although it is not iridious, it is not a banal voice.
00:43 It is that of one of the two halves of the M2,
00:47 the twins of the youth sector of the 80s, Roberto Mancini and Marco Maccina.
00:53 Marco, the San Marinese talent, the golden boy of Monte Titano,
00:59 would become Paolo Rossi's teammate a few years later, in Milanello, Milan.
01:05 The two sides of Maccina's life, from the very young Mancio to the world veteran,
01:11 introduced in Rosso Nero, Paolo Rossi pronounced as a single word,
01:15 without the necessary subdivision between name and surname.
01:20 It is in the Rosso Nero sports centre that one could write a movie sentence.
01:24 Paolo Rossi was here.
01:26 He was a fan of goals against Brazil, Poland and Germany.
01:29 He was several times a Juventus player.
01:32 He was highly appreciated as a television commentator,
01:34 but not always remembered as Rosso Nero.
01:37 If not, for the two goals in the derby of December 1,
01:40 the only ones scored in the Rosso Nero jersey,
01:42 against Walter Zenga in a San Siro derby, in the Terminan, 2-2.
01:46 Yet, in a key season, in a historical year,
01:50 the one of the transition from the Farina presidency to the Berlusconi era,
01:54 Paolo Rossi was a Milanese.
01:57 Even if he was in a very different way from how he was lived and perceived in the football universe.
02:03 For everyone, he has always been and always will be a myth.
02:07 For his teammates in the formation trained by Nils Nidholm, he was a boy.
02:12 That's how he defines, exactly in these terms,
02:16 a product of the Milanese youth sector of those years, Roberto "Lupo" Lorenzini.
02:20 For us Italians, he was the symbol of 1982,
02:24 a magical moment in Italy.
02:27 He was a magical person, he was the star of that team.
02:33 I can remember that he had a smile on his lips,
02:39 a smile in his eyes and a smile in his heart.
02:43 I've never seen a person who conveyed this,
02:48 I don't say happiness, but this way of accompanying life.
02:53 Without any kind of comparison between men and players, completely different from each other,
02:59 Paolo Rossi, in 1985-86,
03:03 was exactly what Leonardo Bonucci would have been in 2017-18.
03:10 A midsummer dream for the Red-Black fans.
03:13 A walk around Valzer with dreams, too short to be remembered,
03:18 a dream confined to the short turn of a football season,
03:23 destined to be the fleeting face of a passing presidency.
03:29 Viro-HA. This was the acronym Virdis Rossi Hetley,
03:34 the name formed with the initials of several words and surnames.
03:38 When in December 2018 Virdis and Hetley celebrated together at the Arena Civica di Milano
03:43 the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Curva Sud,
03:47 only he was missing, Pablito.
03:49 Two years before his disappearance,
03:51 which would have moved the entire football community,
03:54 not only in Italy, but all over the world, as well-known and well-remembered, Filippo Galli.
03:59 I met Paolo Rossi for the first time in 1982,
04:02 the year of the World Cup, when he became Pablito for all Italians.
04:07 I met him when I played in Pescara, in a Coppa Italia match, played in Turin.
04:12 It was never easy to mark him,
04:14 neither on that occasion nor in subsequent occasions,
04:17 when I met him wearing the Milan shirt.
04:20 I was lucky to be with him in 1985-1986,
04:24 when he arrived in Milan.
04:26 He was no longer the Paolo Rossi everyone knew,
04:32 because he had a lot of physical problems,
04:35 but what I can say is that he has always been an extraordinary person,
04:39 a genuine, humble person,
04:41 who never made what he had won and what he had been,
04:45 and so I am really proud to have shared the dressing room with him
04:51 and many beautiful emotions.
04:53 Ciao Paolo, a hug wherever you are.
04:55 The chronicles tell that during the first phase of the 1985 Coppa Italia,
05:01 Paolo Rossi suffered the first injury,
05:04 but Nils Lidholm waited for him patiently
05:07 and that the first and only Sunday worthy of the Spanish meals,
05:10 Pablito would have lived it in the derby of the first leg.
05:14 It was the first December 1985,
05:18 the first derby ever played by Paolo Maldini.
05:21 A challenge of continuous emotions.
05:24 After Rossi's initial lead,
05:26 Spillo, Altobelli and Brady on the line,
05:29 overturned the result in favor of the Nerazzurri,
05:32 but to regain the draw,
05:34 the second guizzo of the number 10 Rossonero, Paolo Rossi,
05:38 was needed, the author of a network of opportunism and rapacity.
05:43 One of those paths on which he knew how to make a hole,
05:47 he and only he, Paolo Rossi.
05:49 Control, turn and left-footed shot, in advance on Beppe Baresi.
05:54 A goal very similar to the third net scored by Pablito
05:57 against Brazil in the now epic match of July 5, 1982.
06:03 A Sunday of grace, that Inter-Minnan 2-2.
06:07 Rossi also touched the treble,
06:09 the news stories tell.
06:11 Already the news stories.
06:13 They talk about results, goals,
06:16 but who was at the Minnan with him still talks about people,
06:20 indeed, of the person.
06:22 Modest and nice, as it was and as he knew how to behave, Paolo Rossi,
06:26 who did not establish relations and contacts only with the greats like him,
06:30 for example Franco Baresi, his fellow from Spain,
06:33 but also with the young people in the first team,
06:35 with the guys of the Primavera at the debut in the first team,
06:38 like Valentino Spelta.
06:40 A memory for me indelible,
06:42 it was a day, I got on the bus, it was spring,
06:46 to go home,
06:48 I did not come back with the Primavera,
06:52 because then it was added to the first team in some training,
06:56 and then I took some companions.
06:58 And once I got on the car of Paolo Rossi,
07:03 it was one of the trips that I will always remember with pleasure,
07:08 because he was really a splendid person,
07:11 modest, nice, humble,
07:14 despite the champion he was,
07:18 and that we all miss,
07:20 because he was really a beautiful person,
07:22 in addition to being a great footballer.
07:25 It is often said, we have done it here too,
07:27 that the only goals of the Pablito Rosso Nero
07:29 were only those of the derby against Zenga.
07:32 True, indeed, partially true.
07:35 The only ones in the league.
07:37 Because then, the 6,600 spectators present in an almost completely empty San Siro,
07:43 in a very cold evening of February 1986,
07:48 saw him score also in a rather anonymous Milan-Empoli.
07:53 Paolo Rossi's goal and a draw for Della Monica.
07:56 Final 1-1.
07:58 Rosso Neri eliminated from the Coppa Italia.
08:01 What a shame.
08:02 But Paolo Rossi's Milan doesn't start and doesn't end on the pitch.
08:06 His example was on the podium,
08:08 but also and above all off the pitch.
08:10 It was him, it was Paolo Rossi.
08:12 Without the need to go through the Coppa Italia,
08:15 the example told by Marco Macina is eloquent,
08:18 sparkling, strong and clear.
08:21 I remember a particular episode that happened to me
08:26 one evening in Milan,
08:28 when we went to dinner together.
08:30 We had two different cars
08:33 and when we left the restaurant,
08:36 my car was stolen.
08:39 So I asked him to accompany me to make the report.
08:44 And when I got to the barracks, I rang the bell
08:49 and they told me to come back tomorrow.
08:52 Then I said that I was a player of Milan
08:54 and that Paolo Rossi was in the car with me.
08:58 And then they left the barracks.
09:02 The day was lit up.
09:04 There was something incredible,
09:09 the joy and the pleasure of having a great champion
09:16 who signed autographs.
09:20 I remember it was a special evening.
09:25 The last time the World Cup was played in Rossonero
09:28 was at home in San Siro against Atalanta di Sonetti.
09:31 A glorious season for Milan,
09:34 away from Europe.
09:36 In two occasions, the goalkeeper Atalantino
09:38 and ex-Milanista Ottorino Piotti
09:40 scored a goal for Rossi at the Radoppio.
09:42 It was him, it was the singing of the swan
09:44 in a red and black shirt of Pablito.
09:46 It was April 27, 1986.
09:49 But these are the chronicles.
09:51 There are the men who played for Milan,
09:56 the men happy to shake his hand and to know him.
09:59 Among them, Andrea Icardi.
10:01 A few months before the double against Zenga by Paolo Rossi,
10:05 it was him, Andrea Icardi, who decided the Coppa Italia derby.
10:10 Icardi's goal, Milan in the Coppa Italia final.
10:13 A net that turned the confirmation in Rossonero for Andrea
10:17 that a few months after that decisive goal in June 1985,
10:22 he would have felt the pleasure, the honor of playing with Pablito.
10:26 Andrea Icardi's story is all human.
10:29 The skill and quality of the player were so clear, so evident.
10:34 They could even wait.
10:35 It is clear that Paolo Rossi was for me a person, a player,
10:41 that I never thought I would know,
10:43 because when I was 18 I was a result like a madman
10:49 to the victory of the great Italy of 1982.
10:57 With him I lived moments of great joy.
11:02 We went to see the games on the Longomare where there is the television.
11:09 We were on vacation, clearly in July,
11:13 and what Paolo Rossi did for Italy at that time,
11:19 in my youth, in my childhood, is clearly something special.
11:24 So I was always very impressed by his person,
11:29 within his weaknesses, his strengths.
11:34 I was able to understand how important Italy was for him
11:39 and how important it was for him to play football.
11:42 And what he was able to give to all of us,
11:46 both the players and the fans,
11:49 I think it is something impossible to have again.
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