Carlo Ancelotti_ The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius - Alessandro Alciato [17]
Roma was just that way. My nickname on the team was Il Bimbo—the Kid—and Il Bimbo is who I am. Someday, I’m going to coach that team, I have a debt of gratitude. It was a fun team to play for. From the very first day. From back in 1979, when Liedholm, on his way back home from a holiday at the spa in Salsomaggiore with his wife, stopped by to see me in Parma and took me away with him. The transfer fee was 1.2 billion lire ($950,000). It was like an episode of The Price Is Right. And, from the minute I got there, it was clear that I was in a unique place, and first impressions matter.
I got off the train from San Benedetto del Tronto at Rome’s Termini station with simple, easy-to-follow instructions: “Get a taxi outside the station, tell him to take you to Via del Circo Massimo, the press conference is being held there. Pay close attention: a yellow taxi, with writing on the door and TAXI written on the dome light on the roof; don’t take a gypsy cab, they’ll charge extra.” Fine. I obeyed the instructions to the letter, but the taxi driver didn’t recognize me; we pulled up outside of Roma headquarters, and there was a screaming, chanting crowd of four thousand delirious fans. In fact, the transfer season of 1979 was an important time: Turone and Benetti had just arrived, Conti had returned from being on loan, and Romano had joined in defense. It was a nice feeling, I felt like one of the team. I was ready to get out of the cab, asked the driver how much I owed him. “Ten thousand lire.” I pulled out my wallet, extracted a ten thousand lire note, handed it to him. There was a growl of disapproval from the fan base. When they saw that I was paying the cabbie, the crowd turned ugly, and insults flew in the general direction of that unfortunate taxi driver. “A Lazio fan!” “Dirty traitor!” “Nun te devi fa’ paga’—don’t take his money!” “Cojone, asshole, Roma is sacred!” To make a longish story short, they hemmed the cab in, taking the driver hostage, and started rocking the car back and forth for no good reason—and with me inside. I started feeling seasick. It must be fate—I seem to remember the faces of a lot of taxi drivers. He was terrified: “Get out. The ride is free. Just get out of my cab. Beat it!” My career was just beginning, and they were already ordering me out of taxicabs.
There was just one minor detail: I still didn’t have a signed contract. With Parma, I was earning ten million lire ($8,000) a year; now that Roma had recruited me, I had decided to ask them for a hundred million. I was at the summer training camp in Brunico, we’d been working for a few days, so I went to talk directly with the chairman, Dino Viola, a magnificent manager and leader, and a man who counted pennies. “Ancelotti, how much do you want?”
“A hundred million lire a year, Mister Chairman.”
“You are out of your mind.”
Then three weeks of total silence. On the last working day before the regular season began, Viola himself called me: “Ancelotti, have you thought about your salary?”
“Well, maybe we could talk it over …” So I let him talk me down to 24 million lire ($20,000) a year before taxes, from my original demand of 100 million lire a year after taxes. Twenty-four million lire—more or less the same salary Parma had been paying me. How long did negotiations last? About twenty-nine seconds. Results of the negotiations: disastrous. Just like my debut in Serie A, at the Stadio Olimpico, playing against the champions of Italy, A. C. Milan. Enormous tension, enormous excitement, an unsettling sense of doubt as to whether I was up to the challenge of that gigantic world. After the first minute of play, Conti runs up the length of the pitch and hits the post, Pruzzo brings it down with his head. I’m in the penalty area, Albertosi makes a miraculous save, and the ball rolls out half a meter in front of me. I can’t believe my luck—on my début in Serie A! I close my eyes, pull back, and send an intercontinental missile toward the goal; so hard my foot was hurting afterwards. Albertosi gets to his feet and blocks the ball with his face. Jesus, he