Claudio Garella, the legendary goalkeeper of Naples and Verona who taught Italians that dreams can come true for everyone, died at the age of 67
The death of Claudio Garella, historic goalkeeper of the 80s and mythical number 1 in the teams of Naples and before Verona Scudetted, reminds me of a Sunday afternoon in Cerano. Ceranese Sunday afternoons have always been either too cold or too hot, but there was always a pinch of hope of leaving the village and returning winner and champion.
Garella even if he was born in a big city like Turin, he represented the example of the healthy province of the 1980s, that of the “I want because I can” and not with too many salamelecchi or turns of phrase, but with concreteness! “I also saved with my ass”, would be the most appropriate title for an autobiography or biography of him because he parried everything and everyone. But especially with the Juventus, and that made me like him. He made me feel like a child again every time I heard his name and I remembered the legendary Sundays playing at the Bellotti camp in Cerano with poor kids like me but who pretended to be Pele …
Nobody wanted to go to goal and I went there with great pleasure because it was priceless and I didn’t care about technique or class, but not to give joy and those ugly assholes. The day I found him in front of me with all his size and height and the nose of a sports director of a small Turin club, he felt like I was in heaven. A man of few words and many facts who will remain in the hearts of all lovers of real football, the one without tissues and letters without too many tattoos but many moments to share.
My Billy generation“from the most popular fruit juice among 80s boys”, does not forget those endless afternoons trying to tame a ball and dreaming of a cold drink after the huge sweat where fat was not even contemplated in our thin bodies as a It should be noted that some phenomenon and hint of the current disgust was already there, but in those years the parents were figures that you only saw during meals and parties and that you feared more any punishment not suckers like now.
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