Former AC Milan defender and club icon Franco Baresi has looked back on his career from starting as a child to reaching the highest possible point as a player with the Rossoneri.
Baresi is a man who needs little introduction having spent his entire 20-year career with Milan, captaining the club for 15 seasons. He is righty considered one of the greatest defenders of all-time and he won three UEFA Champions League titles, six Serie A titles, four Supercoppa Italiana titles, two European Super Cups and two Intercontinental Cups with the Rossoneri.
He gave an interview to Corriere della Sera today in which he went in-depth on a number of topics including losing his parents young and why that has made him promote stability, with his comments relayed by PianetaMilan.
On being a Milan legend: “What big words. I am just someone who was born in 1960 in Travagliato, in the Brescia countryside, and who was lucky enough to feel ‘free to dream’. And in fact I wanted to give this title to my autobiography, written together with Federico Tavola. I was lucky to hear my dreams. And to find people on my way who would teach me to listen to them.”
On his humble upbringing: “We had a wooden tool in which a basin full of embers was placed to warm the cold bed. True, it was not easy to dream for a child born in a peasant family and raised in a farmhouse, among cows and tractors. But my mother Regina was a woman who meticulously took care of the cleanliness and order of us children.”
On his brother Giuseppe Baresi, beloved but rival in the derby with Inter: “He arrived in Milano, at Inter, before me, and when Milan took me, for an initial period, we shared the house. Everything was fine until the week of the derby arrived: soon we would have to challenge each other and therefore we had to be rivals. Let’s say that sometimes my foot was lighter when it met him.”
On living a similar career to his brother as a player: “Did we imagine it? We didn’t watch TV, let alone go to the stadium. I didn’t even know who Pele or Cruijff were. But then, at the age of ten, I happened to see what for us Italians is still the match today, that is, the semi-final against Germany at the Mexico World Cup. A shock. Then I began to dream.”
On he wanted to become: “Maybe Pierino Prati.”
On the region of Lombardy, which has given many talents to football over time: “You see, everything was born from the passion of every day. We started playing in the farmyard with a leather ball, then one day a priest, Don Piero Garbella, came and encouraged us to follow our dreams. Real football began in the peasant way: cultivating children in the places where they were born, observing them in the courtyard of the oratories. At the Unione Sportiva Oratorio Travagliato there was the rule to go to sleep at 10 in the evening. I still do it now.”
On his arrival at Milanello: “Do I remember? Yes, and how! It didn’t seem real to me to see Gianni Rivera, Nils Liedholm, Nereo Rocco up close. I remember the first match in Serie A, against Verona. Away.”
On Milan being a second family: «Of course. I lost my mother at thirteen, my father at seventeen. I have always sought stability in things. In work, in sport, in the family. Do you know that on September 10th I reached thirty-eight years of marriage with my wife? And we have been together for 40.”
On how he met his wife Maura Lari: “Maura served at the tables of the Piccolo Alleluja restaurant in Montevarchi. She was the owner’s daughter. The Milan masseur, Paolo Mariconti, noticed that I was staring raptly at that beautiful blonde girl. And then he shot me and said, ‘Miss, please serve him first, because he’s the captain’. I blushed. But since then, Maura and I have never left each other and every year we celebrate the day we got married.”
On being a man full of emotions: “Very much so. I cried a lot in my farewell game. And mine was a cry of joy, because seeing all those fans and team-mates celebrating me was an emotion I never experienced. Then once in one of the Rossoneri clubs they read me a letter from a fan. I cried there too.”
On Diego Armando Maradona: “Once he said ‘Baresi is one of the best’. From an immense champion like Diego, how can you not be moved?”
On his sons Edoardo and Gianandrea: “One deals with finance, the other with art. We see and hear each other often. Becoming a grandfather? It is a recurring thought. We will see.”
On the advice he gives to his niece Regina Baresi, daughter of Giuseppe, a football player: “No, she has a father who is better than me in this respect. Sometimes we have commented on women’s football: in Italy we are still far behind in this, I think there is great potential to explore.”
On his recurring dream: “I often dream of my first Champions League win at Milan. You see, I have lived through many different eras in the team, including relegation. There have been very deep ups and downs and if I am still here today, in the Rossoneri, it is not because I feel like a ‘symbol’, but it is because here too I have sought stability. I reasoned in stages, as is done in families. I looked for a balance.”
On Arrigo Sacchi: “He was very demanding, he asked for the maximum. Then, in the preseason retreats, he came to check if we slept at night and then, when we heard him coming, the ‘turn off the light’ moment was triggered. He caught us out sometimes and then he started chatting with us about strategies and formations.”
On the most adventurous thing he did: “Apart from certain moments of football, there weren’t any. I could tell you that it was the journey that I happened to make in the Amazon, between the natives and the inhabitants of the forest. I could tell you about the Concorde flight. But I like to reply that it was exciting for me to be able to say that I met three Popes.”
On what he does when he doesn’t think about football: “I don’t do particular things. I read, I love crosswords, I like walking, I watch basketball games and especially tennis.”
On who would choose between Roger Federer, Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic: “Federer, but what a question. I believe it is a combination of talent and grace. That moment we are all looking for.”
