In a long interview granted to Tuttosportthe patron of Atalanta Antonio Percassi spoke about the moment of Italian football in terms of the development of young talents: “In numerical terms, football remains the most significant sport in the country, in my opinion there is a lot of unexpressed talent that needs to be discovered and brought out. We need to find the right key and we will return to having great Italian talents.”
Is there a boy right now – it doesn’t matter to name him – from your youth team who you imagine could lift the Golden Boy in the next editions?
“Look, for us all the boys from Zingonia are Golden Boys, that is, golden boys, for what they do and how they do it. If they then become Golden Boys on the pitch too, then all is well.”
Let me ask you one last personal curiosity: why does a professional footballer at the height of his career in Serie A, like you were in 1978, at the age of 25, decide to quit to start being an entrepreneur? The choice, seen now, was obviously much more than right: but he will admit that to a boy it may seem eccentric that a twenty-five year old who is a footballer, his dream profession, abandons everything to open a shop.
“So, I remember that on Saturdays, in the pre-match retreats we did away from home, we used to go to the cinema in the afternoon. Something I never liked. So I asked the coach for permission to take a walk in the centre, where I went to I went around to understand which shops worked better than the others. And I noticed that the Benetton ones were always full, but I thought it was also time to do something and so… . I preferred work. You know, as a child I used to bring lunch to my older brothers on the construction site, I grew up with a certain work culture. And then, let’s be honest, I saw Madonna players around me and I said to myself: where do you want to go? So one day I decided to call Luciano Benetton. He was kind and called me back immediately and I asked him if I could open his own shop in Bergamo and he was immediately enthusiastic. From that fantastic meeting and with the money that I had earned in football I opened that shop and everything started from there.”