Football, Sandro Mazzola turns 83: ‘The ball still excites me’

Turin, 8 November (LaPresse) – ‘El balòn’. At the end of an interview with Donatella Scarnati, broadcast on Vivo Azzurro TV on his 83rd birthday, Sandro Mazzola responds without hesitation to the question of what still excites him. He repeats it four times, as if to evoke a love as passionate as it is reciprocated: ‘The ball, the ball, the ball, the ball…’ Then he adds: ‘And seeing young people committed to the ball.’ Those two words, young people and ball, are the focus of his long, heartfelt “confession”. The third word is “dad”. And it couldn’t be otherwise. Because in the Superga tragedy, which deprived Italy of the legendary Grande Torino, Sandro lost much more than a champion. He lost his dad. When Donatella Scarnati asks him what he would say to his father today, he replies: “Today I would tell him not to say anything to me anymore”. He explains the reason directly to his father Valentino. The interviewer and the camera seem to disappear, leaving room for an intimate conversation between father and son: “Because I’m not able to do what you want me to do, as you told me when I was younger and couldn’t do anything”.