Massimo Brambati, a former football player, gave an interview to La Gazzetta dello Sport where he reflected on his career: `Recently in Turin, I went to see the boarding house where I used to live. My debut in Serie A was in 1986, Torino-Milan 2-0, Gigi Radice put me in instead of the great Junior. Once, in training, we were practicing switching play from one flank to the other and I was paired with Junior. He would serve me the ball perfectly at my feet from 40-50 meters. I couldn`t, I would launch it off-balance, meters away. So, he took out a handkerchief and waved it: “Hey, Briegel, I’m here!”. Radice – whom I used to imitate in the locker room, and he enjoyed it – called me Briegel because he said I reminded him of the German player from Verona. Toro has stayed with me, and to the fans, I say that President Cairo saved the club and keeps it in Serie A at a good level. Football is complicated, and Cairo is a successful businessman. I don’t know which league Toro would be in without Cairo`.
Maradona, Platini, Baggio, Rummenigge, Van Basten, Gullit… In those years, between Toro, Empoli, and Bari, you marked a series of phenomenal players.
`They were all great, but Maradona belonged to another galaxy. How much I fouled him! Let me tell you this story. Ciro Ferrara’s farewell match in Naples. I’m part of the organization and I’m in the stadium tunnel when Diego arrives, surrounded by a group of people. He sees me, makes his way through, hugs me, and I, unintentionally, in my excitement, step on his foot. He says: “Damn, Massimo, are you hitting me even here?”. It was a more human football`.
In 1996, your great friend and teammate Enrico Cucchi died (at thirty years old from melanoma, ed.) and you say that at the funeral many players were talking about penalties and the transfer market…
`More than anything, it seemed to me that they were there because they had to be. I experienced Enrico’s tragedy closely. We had been roommates both at Empoli and Bari. He had a mole on his leg, and one day, due to an injury, they sent him to have ultrasounds precisely on that area. The mole grew, transformed, became a terrible tumor. And I remember the tragedy of Massimiliano Catena (who died in a car accident near Cosenza in 1992, ed.). We were young and footballers, we felt invincible, yet people were dying. Cucchi, a strong midfielder, told me that at Inter he had scored a goal with ill-fitting shoes that Rummenigge had given him, one of my idols as an Inter fan`.
The Cucchi case brings us back to the abuse of drugs.
`They gave us Micoren pills as if they were candy: to improve breathing, they said. In another club, another pill: to increase reflexes, they explained`.