Mihajlovic’s last challenge, 8 kilometers in the rain before being hospitalized: Arianna didn’t want to

“We Were Not Prepared”🇧🇷 In memory of Sinisa Mihajlovic if there is a sentence Ivan Zazzaroni what draws attention is precisely this. You cannot explain it, you cannot understand it. But anyone who has experienced a lot of pain knows what that means. A sudden sense of loss washes over you and you feel a great emptiness inside. As much as death is in front of us and bumps its snout in our face as if to say ‘look at me, here I am, I’m here, it’s me’, we never believe that this could be true. And so you pray, you hope, you delude yourself. You are never ready and words are lost.

“I met the real Mihajlovic”, says the director of Corriere dello Sport, leaving aside the warrior rhetoric because Sini was something else, of another type. He talks about how he lived, how he really was the man, the friend of a lifetime and once again sums up his essence in one expression: “the sweetest of the hard”which already says it all and is the leitmotif that accompanies the person’s transparent narration.

Whoever managed to gain access to your confidences and also to your pain is very clear that behind certain shots – one attacks the wall, the other doesn’t have the courage to appear because he knows well that if he finds me he will take it -; behind certain asperities and funny exhibitionisms, I said, there was a sensitive man, with feelings, a father who raised his voice with his children and threatened punishment a few moments before giving himself over to love.

At home, he was the good cop, Arianna the cumbersome paper. You played a role, that of a warrior, that will remain in people’s hearts. Though I always preferred the authenticity you hid. They all affected his way of dealing with the illness for the first time. The face to face with a more ferocious and sneaky opponent. You against leukemia: let’s start as equals, you said. But then… You wore all the faces of the disease: you never lacked courage. Courage and recklessness.

Sinisa Mihajlovic sits next to the Bohemian coach during Zeman’s book presentation.

Zazzaroni cites some anecdotes as if Sini were still ahead of him (as he affectionately called him) that “although the disease was devouring his existence, but not his mood, until a few hours before entering the hospital for the last time, he planned trips, appointments, called friends, Leo, Stefano, Roberto, threatening retaliation”🇧🇷

Eight kilometers, in the cold and rain. Mihajlovic, weakened by the treatments, with very few platelets in his blood, wanted to go for a walk. He had done it against leukemia and logic. But logic has nothing to do with such situations. “Arianna (his wife, ed.) had begged him to stay at home, to postpone. Later, he told me, watching the television showing a Christmas commercial, the family gathered around the table, Sini said that he felt happy and that it was his idea of ​​happiness: he, Arianna, their children, their companions and Violante, his niece who is so much like him in expressions, especially in false melancholy”.

The former coach beside his wife during the granting of honorary citizenship in Bologna.

And again the promise made to the team (and kept) to stay on the bench in Verona even if “just a shadow that struggled to get up. Or when you left the hospital after surgery, obviously against the doctors’ advice. Or on the many blitzes in Casteldebole to watch training: you wanted to make it clear that you were always there and that you would come back You left a few days before Christmas. You didn’t leave an unbearable void just at the moment when we all need warmth, love, family, old friends, good news, serenity, peace. We weren’t prepared We dreamed of seeing you again with a smile and muscles and hear his unmistakable voice, that Italian who couldn’t digest the articles”.

One of the last appearances of Sinisa Mihajlovic on the Bologna bench.

A deep and loyal bond. It’s the most touching and emotional part, because now in the foreground is Zazzaroni’s heart that speaks (and writes) without filters. After seeing him for the last time in the hospital room, she wrote what she describes as a letter to the friend she has loved for 30 years.

Even in the most difficult moments, one in particular, the one I cannot forget and cannot forget, esteem and friendship always prevailed over disagreements, misunderstandings, the pettiness of those who could not or did not want to know the truth. And when a few years ago, in the Parco dei Principi, you explained to me that ‘we don’t have time to make new friends, it’s better to keep the old ones’, I understood that it couldn’t be otherwise.

Hi Sini, I just deleted all your messages, not your number. The memories will be the presence of your soul. But now I can tell you: Arianna was right, that painter’s cap was awful.