Hi President, the greatest president in Juventus history passed away at almost 93 years old.
Hi, President. With Giampiero Boniperti from Barengo, not only a great former footballer leaves, a great former president and football manager. With him goes a world that saw, read and interpreted football in an antithetical way to that of today. I became a Juventus fan in 1970, Giampiero Boniperti became president of Juventus a few months later. More than fifty years have passed, my president is now called Andrea Agnelli, but it seems that Juventus and football are something else entirely.
The lawyer Agnelli, Umberto Agnelli and now Giampiero Boniperti. Juventus, my Juventus is gone. Villar Perosa's pagan Ferragostan rite, the arrival by helicopter of Avvocato Agnelli who then went to take his place on the bench next to Trapattoni to watch the match between Juventus A and Juventus B. And in the meantime, president Boniperti resolved in his own way the contractual problems, always trying to make ends meet on and off the pitch. In his day there were no Mino Raiolas and Jorge Mendes with their millionaire commissions. Only he and the player were discussing renewals and adjustments.
Hi President. Giampiero Boniperti, the skilled accountant
The story tells us how, when some of the players submitted the request for a salary increase, the good president pulled out of the drawer of newspaper clippings that reported detailed reports of performances not exactly up to the player in question. But Giampiero Boniperti knew how to do the accounts, and well. Ever since he agreed with the lawyer Agnelli that each net made had to correspond to a cow as a gift to be taken from the property of the Agnelli. The farmers always got angry because Boniperti always chose the pregnant ones. He who always ordered newcomers to have short hair and to be well-groomed.
Because it was Juventus. You entered a world where the culture of work, competence, professionalism walked hand in hand with an image of order, education, sobriety, in pure Savoy style. Words: few, only the indispensable ones, facts: many, preferably within the green rectangle. Giampiero Boniperti da Barengo had that way of being, that way of living, that way of thinking he had in his DNA. He had not become a Juventus player, he was born a Juventus player. This is why remembering him today that he left us is like remembering one of us, one with an infinite passion for those two colors: white and black.
Great respect for the Grande Torino
The other half of Turin, that grenade, courted him a lot. None other than Valentino Mazzola wanted him on his team. Giampiero Boniperti met the president Novo, but his proposal did not even listen to him: “I'm from Juve, I can't”. Point. If he could have canceled the matches against Torino he would have canceled them from the championship calendar: "If I could I would abolish them, the derby consumes me: I love Juve too much and I have such respect for Toro that it cannot be otherwise". Respect. Try looking for this word in today's football vocabulary. You won't find it anywhere.
On the one hand, respect and on the other a sense of belonging which has also disappeared today. Now the footballers pass quietly from one side of the city to the other. From Juventus to Turin, from Lazio to Rome, from Milan to Inter, because they are professionals and it does not matter if the fans will have to love / hate those who have sportedly loved / hated for a long time. The problem is only them, certainly not professional footballers.
Hi President. The carousel of memory
And as always happens in these cases, dozens of images of the President crowd into the mind. His interviews at the stadium at the end of the first half, when he often preferred to go home so as not to continue to suffer damnably in the stands. The many joys for the many victories, the many pains for the defeats, especially those in the derby, and that black hole, almost unmentionable, certainly unforgettable called Heysel. A non-victory in the most tragic evening in Juventus history.
The moved and sad faces of Trapattoni, Zoff, Gentile, Cabrini, Furino, Bonini, Tardelli, Platini, Bettega, Causio, Boniek, Brady, Del Piero appear and I ask myself: what are they thinking about now, remembering the president? What will be the first thought that will jump into their head? And then Scirea, Anastasi, Rossi, his other children who died prematurely, whom he will find in who knows what corner of creation. Many, too many thoughts related to a character who has indelibly marked a passion that has no time or age.
With Giampiero Boniperti another piece of that plaster full of colors and memories that made adolescence and youth unique is detached. In his twenty years as president of Juventus, the victories came in clusters: nine league titles, two Italian cups and the first international trophies in history: the Champions Cup, the Uefa Cup, the Uefa Super Cup and the Cup Winners' Cup. Juventus, under his presidency, was the first European club to win all the UEFA trophies.
Giampiero Boniperti. Juventinity
Giampiero Boniperti, however, was not only this. He embodied Juventus like no one else. In 2000, Antonio Barillà tells in La Stampa, when Carlo Parola died, Boniperti wanted to tie the tie of his old social uniform around his neck: "I did, he said, even though I didn't have operational roles, but he had brought elegance to Juventus, elegance and glory ".
The famous Juve style was none other than his style, which he had absorbed like a sponge from the assiduous acquaintances with Giovanni and Umberto Agnelli. It would be too easy to say that with Giampiero Boniperti there would not have been the shame of Calciopoli, but neither would there have been embarrassing figures such as those concerning the Superlega or the Suarez case. Giampiero Boniperti was an extraordinary president, manager of Juventus because, as he liked to say: “I don't have Juventus in my heart, it's my heart”. Hi, President.
Article by Stefano Vori
