The background linked to the young man highlighted with the national team shirt after the excellent year at Bologna
Blossomed almost suddenly. Because Riccardo Calafiori was not immediately under the spotlight. Today’s edition of Repubblica returns to his growth path: “Do you want to know how much Roma got from his sale? More or less two and a half million. Without an option to buy him back, because – they say – never convinced of his condition, despite the fact that it was the giant of American surgery Freddie Fu who put the pieces of that exploded knee back together when Riccardo was only 16 years old. The teams he was proposed to also thought so – Juve, Milan, Inter, Atalanta – all except Frosinone. But in the end it was Basel.
There Riccardo’s life changed. The problem wasn’t the knee, but the diet: a new diet, some banned foods, other foods. And then move away from the comfort zone of Rome.
Steps towards growth. It is there that Bologna materialized, in an almost irreplicable astral alignment. Last August 31st, when the end of the transfer window was a handful of hours away and Thiago Motta still needed a left-footed defender, Giovanni Sartori was reminded of the defender he had seen in a Young Boys-Basel match, months earlier. Motta asks him: «Do you feel like being a central defender?». He doesn’t even think about it. The rest is a story you know.”
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