'I am Cruyff' - an excerpt from Stefano Borgonovo's 'Attaccante nato'
Before a game started I confessed, to the priests but especially to my fellow players: "I am Cruyff". That was not considered a major sin, especially for the players in my team. I ran, I marked and I loved it. My parents had a stall in the market, and I had a permanent place on the field. It was my home. Como, Inter, Torino and Milan wanted me because I could never keep still, and even they had understood who I was: a striker who had escaped from table football.
I breathed. Breathing was great. My lungs were taking it all in because at that age you gulp down everything indiscriminately, just as it comes: air, smog, hopes, disappointments and dreams, and nothing ever seems to harm you. You are living without knowing you are alive, you are busy learning the rules of a game bigger than you are. I was Cruyff, and that made me happy. Every so often I told the children at the football school that it's a responsibility to feel like one of the greats, but it sometimes does you good. It helps you understand where the line is, to escape for a moment, to draw a breath as long as you can.
I have played for the Como, Sambenedetta, Milan, Fiorentina, Pescara, Udinese and Brescia clubs and perhaps I never finished growing up, and what's so wrong with that?
I have remained able to express my emotions, even if less visibly now. Everything is much more intimate: the perspective has changed, I am less alone yet more solitary now. Like in those eternal card games with your computer, one playing against the other. Whichever side can predict the other's moves wins. In my case with one substantial difference, which saves my life: the computer is playing on my side. 24/7. We are not opponents, it thinks and I attack, because I have not lost my will to live. Because I am Cruyff.
Excerpt from 'Attaccante nato' (Born Striker), by Stefano Borgonovo and Alessandro Alciato
