MILAN – 27 May 1971 is a date I'd like to remove from my memory, but I can't. I had just turned two and that day fate chose to deprive me of my father, Armando Picchi.
Everyone knows him as the captain of Angelo Moratti, Helenio Herrera and Italo Allodi's Grande Inter, a legendary team that stands alongside Valentino Mazzola's Grande Torino as one of the greatest Italian sides of all time.
For me, for my mother Francesca and my brother Gianmarco, he was just starting out as a husband and father – so brief was the time we were able to enjoy his presence in our lives.
Today, 45 years on from that date, all I have left of him is a faded memory. And sadly, over time, it has become a memory of a memory. Him standing giant-like down the other end of a long corridor, throwing me a coloured cloth ball and me trying to kick it back to him. Years later I was told that was at my nan's house in Livorno.
So when I had the opportunity to begin my professional career in the Inter press office over 15 years ago, I was ravenous for details, anecdotes, stories. I would often ask Mario Corso, Luisito Suarez, Giacinto Facchetti or Gianfranco Bedin to talk to me about what my father was really like. Not the man glorified in the newspaper reports, nor even the one who had been elevated to almost saint-like status by his family and closest friends following his premature passing.
At home we couldn't mention him without my mother bursting into tears. It was painful to talk about him with my brother too – there was always a sense of underlying discomfort which made it hard to go beyond the feeling of emptiness that would always mark our lives. Because losing your father at that age means you lose direction, a guide in life, a rock to lean on at difficult times.
That's why I was always trying to find out more about the person he was away from training and matches – from the team-mates mentioned above, with whom I shared the offices at our old headquarters in Via Durini, and from his closest friends such as Tarcisio Burgnich, Aristide Guarneri and Sandro Mazzola.
Over the years, thanks to his team-mates and the memories of his older sister, my aunt Mity – who mostly told me about 'little Armando', the kid and the adolescent, the alter boy and aspiring footballer who used to play in the church yard – I built up a picture of my dad that went beyond the newspaper and TV reports telling the tale of a fearless leader and captain. I formed a more personal, spiritual image of him that in some ways made him more accessible. It also made it easier for me to deal with the difficulty of comparisons I could never hope to live up to.
Fate certainly chose an incredible date to take him away from us, aged just 35. 27 May was the day of his greatest achievements on a football pitch; the day when, six and seven years previously, he won the European Cup in Vienna and Milan; the day he held that wonderful silver trophy up to the skies, offering it to all Inter fans.
Today, as I have done on this day every year for the last 15 years, I'll go into the trophy room when no one is watching. I'll gently touch the handles of those cups, close my eyes and, just for a moment, I'll imagine I'm holding hands with my father.
Leo Picchi
