Aspire in the World Fellows Book - 2023

/100 9TH ASPIRE ACADEMY GLOBAL SUMMIT You have set a lot of records throughout your career, but I would like to start withwhat you are doing today, you are the Vice President of Inter. What do you do exactly, and howdid youmanage the transition frombeing a player to a top-level manager? Howdo youmake the right decisions?What pieces of advicewould you give to a player who is at the end of his career and needs to decide about the future, needs to decide if hewants to be a coach or amanager. Speaking of being humble, if you are not humble, you cannot have a career like the one that you had, no one has as many appearances as a player in Inter as you have. Howdid youmanage to go over theageof 40and still play? This morning one of themost important Italian referees, Orsato, he gave an interview and he said, when you go into the schools to educate on football rules, hementioned you because you always used to say to him, “even if you made amistake, go hard on your journey.” Hearing those words from a referee like Orsato, it was a pleasure for me, because this means that throughout your career, you always tried to behave in the right manner. The fact he mentioned me as a role model in front of school children is such a nice thing. When I played football, it is the same thing I always tried to do, now with my children and all the young players I come across. First of all, you need to be prepared. when I decided to stop playing , I already had in mind what I wanted to do in my future. I did not see myself being a coach, I wanted to be a manager with a 360 degrees vision, not only connected to the sport side of things, but I knew I had to learn a lot to have that vision. So, I decided to study at Bocconi, and there is one of my professors here who gave me a big hand on the road, and we started this journey together, and that was a very important choice for me. A very important decision that allowed me to discover and learn so many things I did not know about when I played. Now I feel like I am a resource for my club, I am on the FIFA board, on the UEFA board and I am the Vice President of Inter. I support the sport side but I also work with the corporate side, I get involved in social projects in international relationships and when we are at the stadium and we look at our players at club we want to see a united club, the objectives are clear. From the bench is also very important to be able to form a good club, also off the pitch. I do my best, so that the club can give the best when they play. I think you have to feel it inside what it is that you want to do, you have to have passion, you need to be engaged and you need to have a lot of respect for the profession that you picked. You need to be humble as well, you need to know that your career as a player is coming to an end, then what you want to do in the future will be something completely new, you are starting from zero. You need to be aware that you need to learn, you need to listen to the people who are more experienced than you because you can learn from them a lot. Yes, I played until I was almost 41, with a lot of respect of my profession, putting a lot of effort into the game. I knew that with players at such a high level I needed to be focused, and everything I did during the week, I put it into the matches at the weekend. I am a resilient person. I always tried to learn from defeat, from the challengingmoments, that is howyou get stronger. I always felt that I had to be at the service of my teammates. As a captain I always used to say that we were all important, but no one was more important than the team as a whole. If you want to pursue important objectives that is what you need to do.