Inter also has a Presidential Knight: who is Beppe Marotta, the puppeteer of Italian football

They called him the Kissinger of football, the manager behind the only three Italian Champions League finals since 2010: an endless career between great achievements and ambitions as a minister

ROME – There were Marotta, Bobo Maroni and Attilio Fontana, the one with the reverse masks. It’s not a joke but three elevenths of the same youth team. It was just a game, the ball. It would become his game. From today Inter also has a Knight as president: Beppe Marotta, the Italian football manager, Ordered of Merit of the Republic, from Varese with never-ending political ambitions. “My secret dream is to enter politics as a technician, without a party card, to offer my contribution in terms of competence and experience”, he told Corriere della Sera. He would be a minister, for now he has stopped at the presidency of the Italian champion team. Stage of a tortuous journey as a very skilled man-everywhere of the ball. The market at his feet, a weaver of threads, promoter of careers. At the time of Sampdoria they called him the Kissinger of Italian football.

Legend has it that little Beppe, at the age of eight, knocked on the door of the Varese stadium and followed the caretaker. It was the gateway to a life that brought him championships, titles and recognition. Three Champions League finals in eight years. Another eight years at Sampdoria, left in fourth place, Champions League preliminaries. Eight more at Juventus, called by Andrea Agnelli to rebuild. Seven championships, all except the first. Goodbye in 2018, for one Cristiano Ronaldo too many. An unhealthy operation, he pointed out, he planted his feet, went to take charge of the opposing safes, while the future Juventus judiciary would later agree with him, between trials, investigations for the Ndrangheta, expelled managers, capital gains and balance sheets in the red.

Marotta would have been a perfect five-party man. He navigated the rough waters of a so-called industrial world, mostly in the hands of merchants. Varese, then Monza, Como and Ravenna, he worked for Zamparini at Venezia (bringing Recoba with him) and then for Atalanta. But he linked his name to “business”. In no particular order: Andrea Pirlo on a free transfer from Milan, Andrea Barzagli fished out of Wolfsburg’s limbo, Vidal, Tevez and Pogba. In Ravenna he weaned Christian Vieri. At Sampdoria, with a clever recycling operation, he brought Antonio Cassano back from Madrid. He left – says Cassano – when the player imposed the either/or, either him or me.

Then there are also the “backgrounds”, it’s clear: Anelka and Bendtner, El Malaka Martinez and Eljero Elia, the sale of Coman or Delneri, first coach of Agnelli’s Juventus. But Marotta is also the leading support of Antonio Conte, the soft part of the tremendismo who would govern and win at Juve and then at Inter (“for Conte I sacrificed Spalletti”). He is the one who handles the Icardi case. He is the one who sells Lukaku and Hakimi, to float in the pandemic crisis. He is the one who hires Simone Inzaghi. There is him, always him, behind the plots that have built Italian football today.

Since Inter’s treble, annus domini 2010, Italy has reached the Champions League final only three times, and all three times, in the backstage, there was Beppe Marotta pulling the strings . The puppeteer. Inter’s darkest knight. The President, from today.

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