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All about Alberto Zangrillo, the new president of Genoa

What is Professor Zangrillo doing smiling while posing with the Genoa shirt? He is the president of the oldest club in Italy. The news, which had been circulating for a few days, aroused no small surprise. Now it’s official: the US holding 777 Partners is the new owner of Genoa and the new president, after Enrico Preziosi’s farewell, is Professor Alberto Zangrillo, Head of the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Department of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan, Knight and Commander of the Republic, author of over 800 publications (he is in the top 10 of the doctors who have published the most in the world), known to Italians for being the personal doctor by Silvio Berlusconi, for his constant presence, also on television, in this year and a half of Covid 19 with positions that dispelled the alarm, including the famous “Covid is clinically dead”, with a pandemic still in progress.

The first statement by the new president was entrusted to social media: a post on Instagram and Twitter. Zangrillo, 63, wrote “#ForzaGenoa, that’s why we fight”, referring to the verse of a choir sung at the stadium by Genoa fans, “It’s the star we want”. The naked American owners of 777 Partners, who took over the club from Preziosi, were looking for a high-profile figure who in some way would serve to restore identity to a people, that of Genoa, who are suffering again this year: Genoa is in fact in full relegation zone and has just changed the coach, via Davide Ballardini and inside Andrij Shevchenko, former Milan star, Golden Ball and champion who has left a deep trace in the history of modern football.

There is no question of Zangrillo’s footballing faith. The passion for the Griffin is authentic, visceral, unassailable. Born in Genoa on April 13, 1958, the son of a manager of the Commercial Bank, forced to leave the city at the age of fourteen due to his father’s work, Alberto Zangrillo has always followed the fate of the Grifone with his father and brother over the years since he was a child beautiful, like the 90 with the ride of Osvaldo Bagnoli’s team in the Uefa Cup, and in the darkest seasons marked by disappointments. In 2017 he tried to convince his friend Berlusconi, already far from Milan, to buy Genoa, perhaps to entrust him to his son Piersilvio, but the idea never took a concrete form.

Zangrillo has always attended Ferraris, the Marassi stadium where Genoa plays their home games. On some occasions, in recent years, he has intervened on Genoese radios and televisions to ask, like any good fan, “More respect for Genoa” and hope for a “club worthy of its glorious history”. Now it’s his turn. He will be the 46th president of Genoa from its foundation, 1893, to today. From the battle at Covid to the presidency of the club of the heart. On Sunday the debut at the stadium, in Marassi there is Genoa-Rome.

Other stories of Vanity Fair that may interest you:

– Amici mai, the rivalries (and the poisons) of Italian sport

– Ibra and Quagliarella, film lives

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