All the truths of Luciano Spalletti: “De Laurentiis, a sultan, Ilary Blasi, a small woman”

Since everything in life in the end is followed, also this story – the story of Luciano Spalletti – He begins with the mother of the coach of the Italian national team, Mrs. Ilva, who extracts some shreds of fabric from a drawer, sits in front of the Singer on a pedal, is her workstation, and begins to sew a flag of Italy for her son, who is in front and shit, paws because it is not looking forward to reaching friends who on the street. They must, all of them, celebrate Italy’s victory against Germany at the Mexico World Cup 1970after a game that is already literature that – from what moment and forever – will be remembered as ItalyArmanianiaquatroatre.

Of this and many many other moments of personal life that is intertwined with public life, the biography of Luciano Spalletti is rich, Paradise exists … but how much effortwritten with Giancarlo Dotto and exit for Rizzoli. From the title there is the philosophy of life of a man who knows well the measure of sacrifice and the rules of the discipline. In the sentimental map of the man who has the task of (re) bring Italy to the World Cup after two missed participations – in June there are the play -offs for the qualification – there is a world of villages, churches, bell towers, fields, many fields and many horizons: all in a few kilometers, all ground by a dialect that changes to every road sign.

Spalletti was born to Certaldo – the village known for giving birth to Boccaccio – but grew up in Sovigliana, where he moved after the flood, in 1967, the son of a Guardian, Carlo, then warehouse worker in a window and Ilva, a seamstress. Today he lives in Montaione, in the Florentine Valdesia, on the hill, where he built “The Rhyme” and where he does the farmer. Vineyards, olive groves, hens, even a lake that Luciano crosses with a raft that has built with his hands. And then animals of all kinds. Horses and pitches and cows, the Papera Snow White, the hens and swans, the Alpaca Ombrone, Navigator and Gaetano, in dogs, Diana the most loved.

The biography unfolds in the path of memories, there are many revelations. There are relationships with the characters encountered along the professional journey. De Laurentiis is defined as “a sultan”, he is reproached for the failure to call on the day of the Napoli Scudetto (“He did not telephones anyone”) and gives himself a such -born feeling: “In Naples I had to play two games: the one with the opponents and the other with De Laurentiis”.

Spalletti shows his affection for Francesco Totti – which is defined as “a child” – but they are not words to honey those used against the current ex -wife of 10 of Rome, Ilary Blasi, who at the time of the facts intervened in the tackle on the coach: “A small woman. When she offended me for free I took even more awareness than I was a lucky man to have a very intelligent partner by my side, who never embarrassed me by intruding with so much arrogance and rudeness in my work ». It is a great admission of humility, the one that – recalling the period with Totti – makes Spalletti say that “I loved to think that my fate as coach was in the foot of this giant of our sport”. And he tenderness the confession of Spalletti, when he says that Totti appeared in a dream “to ask me sorry and say he understood”.

But more than anything else, the purity and sincerity with which Spalletti gets bare emerge. Thorn, tormented man who knows the dough of pain and beauty well that every life collects, silent and sometimes lonely, aware that every story and every tree, as every day gives him confirms the oak in front of the home planted by his father, has its roots.

And his own bring back to a “Small ancient world”with his beloved Santa Carlo when he was twenty years old, his mother Ilva, his brother Marcello who was and is still, although he left this world, guide and bright star. After all Lucio – so they call him friends – in addition to being a winning coach he remained “Morino”, the son of the “dark” who became a man. It is aware that mom Ilda, the partner of a lifetime, Tamara, “sooner or later we will get married”, and her daughter Matilde – a little big woman among the other two children, Samuele and Federico – are her personal “relay of love”.