Twenty years after that historic afternoon, Roberto Baggio he remembers perfectly the day of his farewell to football and on the occasion of the anniversary, he wanted to speak to Brescia newspaper: “I still remember very well that last Sunday of mine on the pitch, in front of the wonderful San Siro crowd: 80,000 people all standing to give me an applause that I will never be able to forget and that I carry in my heart as a precious memory full of gratitude and recognition: in that moment, I understood that I had done something good too.”
What Brescia was for Baggio: “Brescia…I must say that I built very beautiful relationships wherever I went, but Brescia actually represented something different for me. And this thanks to a great president like Gino Corioni who gave everything and even more. And then thanks to a coach, Carlo Mazzone, who I would have liked to have met before and who was unrivaled for his humanity and sincerity. And now I have to stop because when I talk about them I get emotional…”.
The last year of his career: “Deciding to stop is never easy for anyone and naturally it was like that for me too. I thought about it a lot, but everything had become more and more complicated and I would never have been able to go on the pitch without being able to offer the maximum of passion, head and of enthusiasm: only, I felt that 2003-2004 would be my last season.
I continued to cultivate the dream of continuing to play and every time I did so I gave my all… Perhaps I conveyed the concept of never passively accepting difficulties in the face of which, if anything, one must always know how to get back up: one must face the challenges and pursue my dream which for me, as long as I could, has always been to play football which remains the most beautiful game in the world.”
