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“No problem, that’s what I’m here for.”

Four minutes into the game, I saw the ideal situation: he had the ball, I caught up with him, waited until the moment was right. I did my best to break his ankle, and I came pretty close to doing it. The referee, who was supervising his last Champions’ Cup match, gave me a yellow card. Since I was already facing suspension, I was forbidden to play in the following match. Which, unfortunately, would be played against Red Star the following day. Around fifty minutes into the match, a tremendous blanket of fog descended on Belgrade, the Bogeyman suspended the game, and play was resumed twenty-four hours later. We won the rescheduled game on a penalty kick, after a regulation goal by van Basten that Pauly had failed to see. After all, he felt he had to earn his paycheck. And I had to give a meaning to mine, signed by a very angry Arrigo Sacchi: a fine of fifty million lire ($40,000). The most expensive yellow card of my life. To hell with Pauly, and to hell with Stojkovic.

Despite their best efforts, in the end we won the Champions’ Cup (and the chairman revoked my fine). We won 4–0 against Steaua Bucurest, at the Nou Camp in Barcelona. In the semifinal we had eliminated Real Madrid, which Berlusconi had predicted in the locker rooms at the San Siro: “We’re going to win with a goleada—a wave of goals.” And, in fact, it was Milan 5–Real Madrid 0. He was already foretelling the future. He’d certainly seen the future in Sacchi, who gave him, in the years to come, a Scudetto, two Champions’ Cups, two Intercontinental Cups, two European Super Cups, and an Italian Super Cup. Masters of Italy, Europe, and the world. The game was worth playing.

CHAPTER 12

A Double in the Last Match

Carletto, I’m leaving to coach the Italian National Team. I’d like you to come with me.”

“Thanks, coach. I never thought of myself as a player who could still be national-team material.”

No comment, just a deep sense of embarrassment instead. The season was coming to an end, and Sacchi was telling me, in deepest secrecy, that he was about to leave A. C. Milan. But he was also making it clear to me that my career as a footballer was coming to an end, because what he was really saying was: “Do you want to come along as my assistant coach?”

Arrigo Sacchi knew that his time at Milanello was ending (and when your time is up, the sooner you realize it, the better), and he was already preparing to set off on a new adventure: Italy. The national team. To combine his thousand tactics and formations into a single idea. He was the Garibaldi of Fusignano. Before that day, it had never occurred to me that I could become a coach. Arrigo’s suggestion was a blinding revelation to me. For the first time, I saw myself on the bench, and, I have to say, I liked the idea. I immediately saw it as a major opportunity. It was 1991, I was thirty-two years old, I had wobbly knees, and I could continue as a player, but no one knew for how long.

Sacchi, with his great big sunglasses, twice the width of his face, left without a backward glance. For me it was more of an arrivederci than a good-bye.

So long, Arrigo Sacchi; hello, Fabio Capello. Not that I was all that happy to see him. His arrival marked the beginning, for me, of a period of ruthless competition, of being pushed aside, of feeling unwanted. The more I found myself on the bench, the more I felt like jumping over to the opposite shore, the one occupied by Sacchi, where you made decisions without having to run.

You won’t like everyone you meet in life. Fabio Capello and I had—and have—different personalities. The problem—a problem I still encounter on the coach’s side of the equation—is that it’s very difficult to separate a professional relationship from a human relationship. If a player winds up on the bench or in the stands, by the very nature of things he can’t feel a deep sympathy for his coach. The relationship doesn’t take off; it’s inevitable, and that’s what happened to us.

Capello was the first coach who didn’t think of me