Carlo Ancelotti_ The Beautiful Games of an Ordinary Genius - Alessandro Alciato [69]
The reason I wrote this autobiography was to help Stefano. Anything I earn from its publication will be donated to research, because while fans may want to know everything about me, I want to know everything about this disease, and especially one thing in particular: the best way to beat the bastard, as Stefano calls his illness. He has lived in the shadows for two years, ashamed to show his face in public. Then he understood: life is beautiful, and we need to do our best to defend it. We need to fight for life, at Stefano’s side.
In soccer circles, rumors had been circulating for years that something was wrong with Borgonovo. It was an insistent rumor, but no one knew anything for certain. He only emerged once he felt ready: “Friends, I’m not well, that’s for sure. But there is one thing I want to say: the Bastard has already done me enough harm—no more.” He contacted Galliani to organize an exhibition game in Florence between A. C. Milan and Fiorentina (the two teams he played for), he gave an interview to Sky TV, he put his name and reputation into it. He took an enormous risk. It wasn’t easy for someone in his condition. He was clear-minded, but he exhibited the symptoms of his disease: “Here I am, ladies and gentlemen. I am Stefano Borgonovo. And I want to win.”
That was the beginning of the Great Challenge on the soccer field, with Ruud Gullit’s tears and my own sense of helplessness. I saw Stefano in a wheelchair and didn’t know how to react; I didn’t know what to say, how to treat him. I hadn’t seen him for many years, and I never thought he’d look like this when I saw him again. We were all weeping, while he was laughing, and that’s what helped us to sweep away the barriers and prejudices.
To think back on it now, we really did act like idiots; he needed our support, and we just pulled out our handkerchiefs and started sobbing. It was paradoxical that Stefano bolstered our courage, and not the other way around. His brain travels at a supersonic speed, he’s faster than any of us, and, that evening at the Stadio Artemio Franchi, he’d already outdistanced us completely. We were thinking, it’s not possible that he is sick, while he was thinking, it is possible to find a cure.
At that point, I was still shocked and, to tell the truth, somewhat uncomfortable. Once we got back to Milan, Mauro Tassotti and Filippo Galli both told me that they had talked with him: “Carletto, Stefano asked us to go see him.” So I got over my reluctance and got into my car, and drove to his house, in Giussano. I was worried; I was afraid that I would freeze up in his presence, be unable to speak, go blank. Instead, the minute I entered his room I felt fine, I was at ease. Stefano talks through the voice of a computer. He speaks with his eyes, in the most literal sense. He moves his eyes to pick out letters on a display, forming words and phrases and sentences. All you need to do, though, is look at his eyes to understand a great many things, first and foremost that he is more alive than all the rest of us put together. When they say that the eyes are the windows to the soul, that’s a simplification. For him, they are the keys to escape prison—two glittering beams of hope.
The first thing he said to me was, “Do you remember that time when we were on the National team?”
“No, Stefano.”
He started writing