maestro. My first training sessions with him were challenging, to say the least. Usually I spend the time between soccer seasons exercising and training. That summer, instead, since I knew I was being let go, I just lay around and relaxed. I was in terrible shape, and my first warm-up with Arrigo was a terrible experience. His methods were completely innovative. Let’s say that the benchmark for intensity of training had been twenty. Well, at Milanello the level of intensity was a solid hundred. There was just a world of difference, a tremendous and exhausting challenge. At the end of the day, we were all terrified at the thought of climbing the stairs to our bedrooms; we couldn’t face it. Grown men though we were, we broke down sobbing. It was an ordeal, we moved like a squadron of zombies. The short walk from the dining hall to the locker room was a struggle of the will: “We will go out for training … we can’t go out for training …” In the end, of course, we always went out for training; in fact, the pace only increased. The problem was that the day wasn’t over at seven in the evening, after our second training session. Then it was time for dinner, and after an espresso (and before we were allowed to go to bed), Sacchi held a team assembly. Not a technical meeting, a psychological meeting. There was a psychologist named Bruno De Michelis and another executive, a man named Zaccuri, who was director of human resources for Fininvest, Berlusconi’s holding company. De Michelis: “Give me a list of fifty objects, and I’ll write them on this blackboard, numbering them from one to fifty.” The first thing that came into everyone’s mind: “Okay, so they’re crazy, not us.” We decided to humor them, and began listing objects: loaf of bread, house, football, bowl of tortellini (guess who came up with that one), goal, stadium, pussy, car, cup of coffee, and so on, until we’d named fifty objects. De Michelis: “Now I’m going to turn the blackboard around, and I’m going to name them all, in order, without looking.” He did it, too: loaf of bread, house, soccer ball, bowl of tortellini, goal, stadium, pussy, car, cup of coffee … He didn’t miss a single one. “Now I’ll repeat all the words in reverse order: cup of coffee, car, pussy, stadium, goal, bowl of tortellini, soccer ball, house, loaf of bread.” Incredible. We thought we were smarter than him, we weren’t about to let him get away with it.
“Pardon me, Doctor, but what was number thirty again?”
“Sheet of paper.”
What about number twenty? “Pen.”
And number forty-seven? “Sofa.”
New lesson: the brain can do an amazing number of things. Every night, after two daily training sessions, that’s what we did for an hour and a half. Then we started learning relaxation techniques. We would attain a state of complete relaxation through music and words. First we studied the theory of relaxation, and then we’d put it into practice. We’d listen to a piece of music, usually the theme song from Chariots of Fire, with the lights turned down low. De Michelis and Zaccuri would talk over the theme music: “Now, relax your body, listen to your heartbeat. Imagine that you’re on the soccer field, you see the stadium full of fans, the match is about to begin, you smell the aroma of the grass.” They were like a couple of celebrity hypnotists. I still use their techniques today when I’m in a stressful situation. The first team member to collapse was usually Francesco Zanoncelli. He didn’t just fall asleep, he fainted. We could have stuck a fork in him, he was so cooked. By the end of the relaxation session, half the team was sleeping.
So that was A. C. Milan, the team that was scheduled to win the Italian Scudetto this year, the UEFA Champions’ Cup the next season, and the Intercontinental Cup the third season. Sem mis ben, as the Milanese would say: We’re all set. When they turned the lights back on, we’d pick up Zanoncelli’s lifeless body and head upstairs to bed. When training began, I weighed 84 kilos (185 pounds); by the time it was done, I was down to 78 kilos (171 pounds). After training camp, I went back