Carlo Ancelotti by Aleesandro Alciato, Carlo Ancelotti Read Free Book Online

who could have slept through an atomic bomb. “Boys, how are we doing this morning?”
    “Doing great, Coach.”
    And off we’d go to our hotel, to play cards and maybe set fire to our hotel room.
    At the Grand Hotel Brun, in Milan’s San Siro neighborhood, we once came mighty close to doing just that. It was the eveningbefore the Inter–Roma match of 1981. After dinner, it was the usual group of us lying around in our room: me, Roberto Pruzzo, and Bruno Conti. Pruzzo was sprawled out comfortably on the bed, reading a copy of the
Corriere dello Sport
. A lightbulb clicked on in Conti’s massive brain: actually, it was a Bic lighter that clicked into flame. In any case, that genius Conti crept over and set fire to the corner of Pruzzo’s paper. Pruzzo saw the sudden burst of flame, promptly wet his pants, and threw the fiery stack of paper across the hotel room. It dropped to the floor at the bottom of the curtains, next to the bed. In no time the curtains were burning, too. It was an historic conflagration: if Nero had been there, he’d have been tuning his violin. The hotel staff were running up and down the stairwells in search of a fire extinguisher. At last, with much huffing and puffing, they managed to put out the flames in the hotel room, and then the ones all over Conti. Conti paid for the damages to the hotel room, but he never bought Pruzzo another copy of that day’s
Corriere dello Sport
.
    We felt a breath of freedom thanks to Liedholm. With freedom, however, came a number of things; once, a trip to the hospital for the whole team. We left for an away game and wound up on gurneys. We were scheduled to travel to Avellino, near Naples, for the Coppa Italia, and the schedule was routine: practice in the morning, lunch together at Trigoria, departure. Unfortunately, we were running early that day, and our coach had a brilliant idea. We dropped by to watch our archrivals Lazio play at the Stadio Flaminio. “Come on, boys, it’s on the way …”
Li mortacci sua
, as they say in Rome: “Curse his ancestors and forebears.” We were going to pay a call on Lazio.
    We showed up without calling ahead but—how can I put this?—we didn’t manage to slip into our seats unnoticed. We were a glaring yellow-and-red stain on the enemy’s best carpet. The die-hard fans noticed us and gave us the warm welcome they reserve for their crosstown cousins:
“Merde!
Pieces of shit!” The whole stadium turned to stare and shout toward the stands where we were sitting. We sat there, uncomfortably, for eighty minutes; we tried to leave, unobtrusively, ten minutes before the end of the match. The team bus was parked about two hundred yards from the ground. Liedholm was friends with a couple of Rome city cops, and he just climbed into the backseat of their police wagon. We, on the other hand, were left to our own devices. We tiptoed down the stadium stairs, walked out into the parking lot, and there was the entire population of the Lazio fan club, waiting to say hello. So thoughtful of them. We started walking toward the bus, and jackbooted kicks began to fly. We sped up, and vicious insults filled the air. We broke into a run, and legs stuck out to trip us up. It was a full-fledged mob attack—not our idea of fun. Everything imaginable was flying through the air in our general direction, and, for the first time, I put the Maestro’s teachings into practice. “Dribble with your right foot,” and I gave a Lazio fan a sharp kick in the ass. “Dribble with your left foot,” and I let fly with another vigorous kick in the ass. “Slalom dribble,” and I avoided a couple of
biancazzurri
. “Do a leg fake,” and I faked my way past two more Lazio hooligans. “Fake a leg fake,” and I did my best to pretend I wasn’t dying. We had a rough time of it in that parking lot, but we finally made it back to the team bus. It really should have come as no surprise, but still we were horrified to discover that Liedholmhadn’t made