Nuoro massacre, Andrea Carnevale as the surviving son: «I took the brain of my mother killed with an ax to the barracks»
Former footballer and now Udinese manager Andrea Carnevale was 14 years old when his father killed his mother with an ax near their home in Monte San Biagio in the province of Latina. The man spent five years in a criminal asylum then committed suicide in front of his son in the same house and after attacking him.
Carnevale spoke to La Stampa about the family massacre in Nuoro, explaining that he felt like Roberto Gleboni’s 14-year-old son. “When my mother was killed, I kept my head down and carried on despite the pain: I already knew that I would become a footballer, it was my goal. My invitation to young people who may be tempted to throw themselves away in front of these tragedies is to try to react, even if it is hard, very hard,” he told La Stampa. And remember: “My father, having returned home after a year spent working in Germany as a railway worker, began to appear increasingly strange and disoriented, and then to beat our mother in front of us, even while we were having dinner together in the evening. I went several times from the police to be told that if they didn’t see the blood they couldn’t do anything about it. At home there was always an atmosphere of terror, because from one moment to the next my father would become violent, especially towards my mother, who suffered these outbursts of anger. My father was obsessed with the idea that she was cheating on him, a madness that still happens today.”
“One morning my father woke up, took the ax and went to kill my mother while she was washing clothes in the river near the house. I collected my mother’s brain in the river, I took him to the barracks and I said to the sergeant: ‘Did you see what happened then? Do you see the blood now?’ Today, however, I have no grudge against anyone: my father was a sick man who was not treated”, the words of Andrea Carnevale.
The former Udinese, Napoli and Roma striker spoke about this tragedy for the first time a few months ago to Repubblica. “We talked to the police about what was happening at home and they told us: ‘If we don’t see the blood…’. What could I, what could we do? Then, that day, the river turned red. I told the marshal: ‘This is the blood you wanted.’ But I didn’t die, I lived my life.”
During the interview he retraced the ups and downs of his life. Two historic and beautiful championships won with the Napoli shirt (where he made up the marvelous attacking trio with Maradona and Careca), then the dream of the 1990 World Cup in Italy, he who was one of the strongest strikers at that time: starting player (ten appearances in total with the senior Italian national team) but ended up out of the starting team after – at the time of the substitution in the match against the United States – the cameras framed a lip with a “fuck”. “Vicini called me: ‘Andrea, what did you tell me to fuck off?’. I apologised, explained to him that it was just an expletive but from the next match he left me in the stands, until the end of the World Cup”, the words of the former striker.
A few months later, in October 1990, she was disqualified, together with Angelo Peruzzi, for taking a stimulant, phentermine: “I take total responsibility for it. From the Federation they reassured me: ‘You will get one or two months of disqualification’, also because the amount was negligible, zero point. Instead they gave me a year, a beating. They searched my house, there was a criminal trial. I remember that the prosecutor said: ‘We found this product in your home’. And the judge: ‘Ah, those vitamins, I take them too.’ I was acquitted,” he recalled to Repubblica.
In 2002 he was arrested on charges of possession and dealing of cocaine for which he was acquitted: “A phone call I shouldn’t have made, a braggart who accused me, my usual naivety. A terrible period: a month under house arrest, years of trials. I wanted to free myself and I said to my lawyer: ‘Why don’t we settle?’. ‘No, dear Andrea, you haven’t done anything, you must leave the court innocent’. He was right, I was acquitted.”
Carnival and Maradona: “The greatest footballer of all time. I saw him every day, we were friends, yet every time I trembled, because Diego was immense, an exciting personality, I was and am proud to have known him. When he arrived, the airports, hotels and stadiums stopped. Maradona made me rich in soul, heart and also in money.”
Today Andrea Carnevale is happily married to Beatrice (second marriage after the one with Paola Perego) and has worked for Udinese for 23 years. In Friuli he discovered various talents. From Alexis Sanchez, Piotr Zielinski, Allan to name a few among many. The last was the 17-year-old attacking midfielder Pafundi, of whom, again in the interview with Repubblica, he recalled: “The future belongs to him, he will be a permanent starter for the national team”.
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