Alex Del Piero interviews Roberto Baggio. The occasion is the World Sports Summit which is taking place in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. 32 years after the Ballon d’Or, Robi received the award he received at the World Sports Summit from the hands of his former teammate. Together with the two there is Valentina, Roberto’s daughter. “We spoke in Venetian dialect when we played together at Juventus – says Alex – we were almost neighbors but I was a child and he was the absolute champion”.
“The robbery was a shock”
Roberto Baggio then opened up: “People wondered where I had ended up, but at the end of my career I felt the need to live a normal life close to my family and to return to my land. Then, recently, I experienced a very bad episode. I’m referring to the home robbery by six criminals in 2024: it changed the vision of my life, in those months the desire was born in me to inform my family and my children of many things. They had to understand who I was, that’s why today we are here together: it is Valentina’s fault, my daughter. This experience binds us even more, we share many things together which give this relationship even more energy. Being a parent is the most difficult job, you are prone to making mistakes but the love for the family always comes out.”
“In difficult times we understand who we are”
“It counts what you can do in difficult moments, that’s where we understand who we are. I just tried to be the best person possible” says Baggio again. “It’s difficult to find the right words – says Baggio – I just tried to play with an infinite love and passion for football and sport, I tried to be the best person possible and perhaps for this reason I touched the hearts of many people. We all experience good and bad moments but what we manage to do in difficult times is decisive, this shows what we are in life”.
Buddhism
“I have been practicing it for 38 years and I am eternally grateful to those who introduced me to it. It has changed me for the better, it has been the greatest luck I have had: it has profoundly changed my life, if we feel good we can make those around us feel good too and we change the environment around us. This is the essence of Buddhism: if we are not happy all this is impossible. I have not imposed it on my children, Valentina for example is not happy.”
The football crisis
The last words concern the crisis in Italian football: “There is no space for our players and the national team is suffering. In my World Cup there was a framework of a team and you built the rest around it. Fewer foreigners and more space for young people, they are the future. This is my opinion”.
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