Scirea, 34 years later: remembering him is good for football

It's been thirty-four years and it seems like a lifetime if you remember that football had a man and a champion like him

It was a Sunday like today and like today Juventus were playing away when Gaetano Scirea left us, a little more alone and a little sadder. Thirty-four years have passed and it seems like a lifetime if you remember that football had a man and a champion like him and that it was a world populated by people who played football, not footballers out of this world.

They were different times, true, but compared to today's, football was even more different, because it was authentic and human. Scirea was the perfect synthesis, the face and the soul, the feet and the class. If today, thirty-four years later, it still does us so good to remember Scirea gives the dimension of his greatness to those who have not known him and have only heard of him. If today still remembering Scirea makes us smile it is a matter of gratitude with destiny on the part of those who saw him, knew him, were lucky enough to be next to him. If we remember today Scirea is in the hope that this memory can cause a spark to flow somewhere, that a seed can fall from which sprouts a leather ball and a woolen shirt, far from the objectives of the cameras, impossible to frame with a smartphone, elusive for the temptations to earn trillions of euros by betraying a dream, a story, a love.

The memory of Scirea and the inheritance

Scirea earned a little more than a penny of what those who fled to Saudi Arabia earn and was also a little ashamed of it, especially when he saw the workers go to work at five in the morning, as he had seen his parents do who had taught him that money sweats, penny by penny, and that sweat must be respected. Scirea played much better than the vast majority of those who fled to Saudi Arabia, but he didn't brag about it that much, he liked to play ball, it seemed strange to him to have made a profession of it, but he tried to honor her every time he took the field. It was a Sunday like today and like today Juventus was playing away when Scirea left us, a little more alone and a little sadder, but also richer, thanks to the memory that he left us and we can dust every time what we see seems absurd. Thanks Gaetano, keep inspiring us, we need it.