“Giuliani caught AIDS at Maradona’s party”, the memory of his ex-wife Raffaella Del Rosario
Julian Julian he was the first footballer to fall ill with Aids. He died in general silence. None of his colleagues who had played with him at Verona or Napoli were at his funeral. Only Mattei from Como and Vanoli from Udinese. No coach, no president. Just a few friends.
AIDS was a disease to be ashamed of. If you contracted it, you were considered drug addict, homosexual or sexually promiscuous. “He told me in Udine, he had done the routine tests,” explains the ex-wife Raffaella Del Rosario in an interview with Corriere della Sera.
“He came one day and confessed to me that he was HIV positive,” he continues. “My life fell into darkness. My daughter was a year and a half old, luckily she had been conceived before he contracted the disease. The pain, and frankly also the anger, for what was happening to Giuliano, was also accompanied by anxiety for my fate. We were a couple with a normal married life. Perhaps he had contracted AIDS in October. We were in June,” she says.
“I had checks every six months, always with the fear that that disease could affect me too. I separated, I went to Naples with the little girl. I was hurt, anguished. He sued me, cut off all my contributions and asked for custody of the child”, reveals the widow.
“I got married at 22, I worked in television and everything seemed pink to me. Giuliano was very close to Corradini and Diego. We spent the evenings together playing Cluedo, there was a constant festive atmosphere. I got pregnant in the same period that happened to Maradona’s wife,” he continues.
Then, the nightmare began. “He found himself one evening in Buenos Aires, at the bachelor party of Maradona“, tells Of the Rosarywho then passes the ball of the story to a former teammate of Giuliani, who, however, wanted to remain anonymous.
“Giuliano was an excellent goalkeeper and a good guy,” explains al Courier. “But he arrived after Garella, whom we all loved and was affected, through no fault of his own, by this succession. It was complicated, closed. It only lasted two years, even though it was strong. That evening Diego had organized a bachelor party in its own way, there were fourteen boys and 42 girls. Those who were there told me that as soon as the cars with the guests arrived, the doors were closed and the lights went out. Giuliano was seen returning to the hotel at five in the morning, that evening he risked his life”. Eros and Thanatos, instincts of life and death that overlap, perhaps aligned in the domain of destiny”.
“I had given birth seven days ago, obviously I couldn’t go,” Raffaella says again. “This coincidence particularly hurt me and was one of the reasons why we separated. But I remained close to him in the final phase of his life. He had tried everything to cure himself. He had moved to Bologna and found a new partner who, however, left him when his illness worsened. He had no one except his uncles who had raised him and his brother, who died after a complicated life.”
“Giuliano didn’t imagine he would die,” he explains. “The evening before, in the hospital, I was with him. He told me: “See you tomorrow, I want to spend a little with Gessica, our little girl”. She made me swear that I would never tell her daughter the cause of death. I did it. And I kept my word. She, at eighteen, discovered it on the Internet and, for this, she paid a very high price.”
“On the day of his funeral none of his teammates from Napoli or Verona came. Not a telegram, a wreath of flowers. The fear of being associated with him, at a time when having AIDS meant being either drug addicts or homosexuals, had made him a monatto, an anomaly to be ignored”, concludes Raffaella Del Rosario in an interview with Corriere della Sera.
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