Claudio Gentile: “World Cup 82 changed Italy. I only understood it many years later” – Sport

Rome, 6 June 2022 – “On the night of the victory Sandro Pertini met us and told us: you don’t realize what you have done for our country, for Italy. Well, the President of the Republic was right …” . What do you mean? “In the sense that we did not understand! It took years, indeed decades, for us to grasp the ideal, symbolic meaning of that undertaking”. Claudio Gentile is the man who made possible the Blue Miracle of the 1982 Mundial and we are about to enter the 40 years since that triumph. It was he who canceled first Maradona and then Zico on the pitch, in the legendary matches against Argentina and Brazil. “For me then it was just football – sighs the former defender – Instead there was much, much more”. Today there are historians who claim that your triumph marked the end of the Lead Years. “I want to be honest: we were all young, apart from Zoff who was in his forties. We never talked about politics. We were interested in football and stop.” Instead … “Instead around us there was a popular feeling that went beyond the competitive element. We understood it later, maturing and aging”. Who was there, in 1982, has never forgotten you. “I still remember the Monday of the return to Italy, with Pertini’s plane. We were euphoric and we said to each other: there will be a thousand people waiting for us in Fiumicino, it will be nice”. Only they weren’t thousands, but millions. “Exactly. It was an incredible thing. From the airport to the Quirinale, where we were expected for lunch, there was a sea of ​​people. Crazy stuff. And at that point Gianni Agnelli called me”. What does the lawyer have to do with it now? “It has to do with it, it has to do with it. I was playing in Juve. She calls Agnelli and says to me: Dear, the Rolling Stones are waiting for you in Turin, they want you on stage for their …