MILAN - Benito Veleno Lorenzi left us three years ago on 3 March 2007, just before Inter's match in Livorno - the home town of Armando Picchi, another great Nerazzurri player from Tuscany. Lorenzi, born in Borgo a Buggiano in the province of Pistoia on 20 December 1925, was 81 when he passed away.
In the words of late Italian sports journalist Candido Cannavò, "Benito Lorenzi belongs to that group of special players who are full of wit and imagination. The people loved him for his flair. A great personality of Inter during the post-war period, he was loved by many and detested by few."
Lorenzi is remembered for his sense of belonging to the Inter family, for his career as a legendary striker of Italian football in the 1950s. He scored 143 goals in 314 games for the Nerazzurri and was part of the team that won back-to-back Scudettos in 1952/53 and 1953/54.
On the pitch he was Veleno (Poison) for all his opponents (the nickname was given to him by his mother Ida when he was a child), but for many he was a friend when the tension dissipated after the final whistle.
Amadeo Amadei, a team-mate of Lorenzi's at Inter and in the national team, described his companion as a player who "usually provoked everybody on the pitch. Some of them got angry at him, giving him more kicks than normal. And this sometimes got them sent off. He was a bit of a Tuscan."
An extraordinarily talented player who dedicated his time to discovering new talents as a coach at Inter's youth academy, Lorenzi had a rapport of generosity and natural complicity with the city of Milan. It was his city, his reality, in which he moved with that Tuscan temper of his, but he was always on the side of the weak.
