Among the forgotten, those who are most worth dealing with, there is also an Italian champion of 1980s football, a protagonist of the wonderful adventure of Maradona’s Napoli. Or, rather, of Maradona and all the others. Even of an introverted goalkeeper who played for two years with the blue shirt and then was suddenly shown the door and, as a championship winner, ended up playing in Serie B with Udinese. His story was recalled by my colleague Paolo Tomaselli in his beautiful book More alone than a goalkeeper and by Giorgio Porrà with one of his poetic documentaries for Sky Sport. His name was Giuliano Giuliani
He was called Giuliano Giuliani, and was born on the daring date of September 29th, that of Lucio Battisti’s song and the birth of Berlusconi. He died at thirty-eight. He died of AIDS, the first footballer to contract the disease. He died in everyone’s silence. At his funeral there were none of his colleagues who had played with him for Verona and Napoli, only Mattei from Como and Vanoli from Udinese. Not a coach, not a president. Nobody, except a few friends. This, the Covid generation, seems to have forgotten what AIDS was, and still is. The coronavirus has killed six million people worldwide, HIV thirty-six million.
AIDS was a disease to be ashamed of. If you had contracted it you were a drug addict, homosexual or addicted to sexual promiscuity. All things for which common thought, even today, leads to hell. Even then some unfortunate person, who even became involved in politics, said that “there were strong suspicions that AIDS was a hoax”. Magic Johnsonsomeone who experienced that it really wasn’t a hoax, said: “The worst moment of all these was when I was returning from the doctor’s office to tell my wife that I was HIV positive.”
The news
This is the moment from which we start in the conversation with Giuliani’s wife, Raffaella Del Rosario. «He told me in Udine. He had done routine tests. One day came and he confessed to me that he was HIV positive. My life fell into darkness. My daughter was one and a half years old, luckily she had been conceived before he contracted the disease. The pain, and frankly also the anger, for what was happening to Giuliano, was also accompanied by anxiety for my fate. We were a couple who had a normal married life. Perhaps he had contracted AIDS in October. We were in June.”
«I had checks every six months, every time with the sensation that the cleaver of that disease could reach me too. I separated, I went to Naples with the little girl. I was hurt, anguished. He sued me, cut off all my contributions and asked for custody of the child. I started working again in Naples. But those were no longer the happy times of the championship. Beautiful years. We lived in Posillipo, we spent the summer in Capri. I got married at 22, I worked in television and everything seemed pink to me. Giuliano was very close to Corradini and Diego. We spent the evenings together playing Cluedo, there was a constant festive atmosphere. I got pregnant in the same period that happened to Maradona’s wife. And I remember the wonderful celebration of the victory in the 1990 championship, on a ship where the whole team gathered. Everything seemed possible that evening.”
«I had met Giuliano in 1987, in Milan, during a party. I worked as a valet, he played for Verona. He was an introverted, complex, very charming boy. He was nice, humble, boastful, all at once. He had had a complicated childhood, which he didn’t like to talk about. Even to me he never told that his father had been overwhelmed by alcoholism problems, that his mother had been killed in Germany by her new partner. He was destined to replace Zenga at Inter, now he would still be here. Instead, in the end Walter refused to leave and Maradona remembered that yellow-blue goalkeeper who had saved some penalties for him. Through this system of chance, sliding doors, he found himself one evening in Buenos Aires, at Diego’s stag party.”
In Argentina
Here I entrust the story of that evening to a colleague of his who asks me to do it, so that it is free of omissions, without being named. «Giuliano was an excellent goalkeeper and a good boy. But he arrived after Garella, whom we all loved and he suffered, through no fault of his own, this succession. He was complicated, closed. It only lasted two years, even though he was strong.
That evening Diego had organized a stag party in his own way, there were fourteen boys and 42 girls. Those who were there told me that as soon as the cars with the guests arrived, the doors were closed and the lights went out. Giuliano was seen returning to the hotel at five in the morning, that evening he risked his life». Eros and Thanatos, life and death instincts that overlap, perhaps aligned in the domain of destiny.
Raffaella says: «I had given birth seven days ago, obviously I couldn’t go. This coincidence particularly hurt me and was one of the reasons why we separated. But I remained by his side in the final phase of his life. He had tried everything to cure himself. He had moved to Bologna and found a new partner who, however, left him when his illness worsened. He had no one except his uncles who had raised him and his brother, who died after a complicated life.
Giuliano didn’t imagine he would die. The night before, in the hospital, I was with him. He told me: “See you tomorrow, I want to spend a while with Gessica, our little girl.”. He made me swear that I would never tell his daughter the cause of death. I did it. And I kept my word. She, at eighteen, discovered him on the Internet and, for this, she paid a very high price. On the day of his funeral none of his teammates from Napoli or Verona came. Not a telegram, a wreath of flowers. Nothing, Giuliano Giuliani was good at saving penalties, he didn’t deserve an act of solidarity. Around him, during the years of his illness, a void had formed. They even arrested him for an absurd cocaine story, from which he was immediately cleared. But the fear of being associated with him, at a time when having AIDS meant being either drug addicts or homosexuals, had made him a monatto, an anomaly to be ignored.”
It would be nice if one day, someone in the glittering world of football remembered that silent and capable goalkeeper, that unfortunate man, and dedicated something to him. I don’t know, a prize. Or a summer tournament. So, just to remember that Giuliano Giuliani was one of them. Not a plague victim whose existence can still be dismissed today.
