Aspire in the World Fellows Book - 2023

/78 9TH ASPIRE ACADEMY GLOBAL SUMMIT At the end of the game you, the referee, and all the fans werewaiting for the end of the Perugia gamewith the radio in hand. Do you remember where youwere? Was that team the best that you playedwith? Could you have achievedmore trophies You first started to play football close toyour hometown Piacenza, for Lumezzane in the thirddivision. Was there amoment when you said, “Maybe I will never be a Serie A player?” In the 1999/2000 season, you scored the first goal with a penalty kick against Reggina, and the game finished 3-0. Lazio could havewon the title, but then something happened inPerugia. At theendof the game, if Juventus had lost, you would have been champions of Italy. What happened? It’s something incredible. I ask myself a lot of times why they haven’t made a movie yet about that day. It was an incredible day. It was the last day, and the only option for us was to beat Juventus, for Lazio to become champions of Italy, and a downpour in Perugia happened while we were playing here and waiting with our fans in our stadium for the end of the Juventus game. Although it happened 24 years ago, I still feel the goosebumps. I was in the changing room, and I remember that we went out, waiting for the final result from Perugia. When we realized that Juventus had lost the game, we joined our supporters in the stands. Sharing themoment of winning a Scudetto with our supporters was incredible. Yes, because it was clearly a strong team. I arrived during the 1999/2000 season, which was the season of the Scudetto. The season before, that team won the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup, and even though they changed something, it was a strong team built to win over more than one season. That year we lost in the quarterfinals of the Champions League against Valencia when we made the mistake of not approaching the first game as best as possible. If it were not for that day, we could have done much better in that season as well. No, but there have been moments that have not been easy. It was good until the age of 15 or 16. Then when I started to be a professional player, it was not easy. I changed teams for three years and played in the lower leagues at the age of 17, thinking it was easy. But the third division was not. I had those three years that I struggled. When I was 20, I had a great season in Brescello, I was lucky to have a coach like Giuseppe Materazzi who gave me the opportunity to play the first game of the season, instead of more experienced players. In that season, I scored 15 goals in 30 games, and the following season, I transferred to Lazio, and from there, another career started. When I think about Giuseppe Materazzi, I often think about how important it can be tomeet a specific coach and how important a coach can be for players. Youwere a great coach for the youth academy players, first in Allievi Regionali (U16) and then in Lazio Primavera (U19). What are the speeches that a coach has to givewhen the players are developing? As far as my coaching career is concerned, the six years in the youth team were fundamental. I’ve seen that even Mr. Lopetegui started in the youth teams, and it’s a great gym for us coaches because I had the opportunityto trydifferent things, and the result is not the main target. You have the opportunity to experiment with many things, football-related and not. Unfortunately, during my first year as a coach, there was the tragedy of Mirko Fersini, a player on our team who had a fatal accident on a motorbike, and it was trauma for the group. It was a very difficult moment for me because I had just started as a coach, and between two consecutive training sessions, I needed to understand the guys as quickly as possible on the most important topic to help them.