The former Bologna, Atletico Madrid, and Parma footballer looks back on a career divided between talent and ‘distractions’: “On loan to Marseille, I said I was out of action, but I went to Saint Tropez. I dreamed of Arrigo’s offside calls.“

It is in the closing credits that you can read his whole story. Stefano Torrisi stopped playing ”at 37, at home, in Ribelle di Castiglione di Ravenna, First Division. At a village meeting, we talked about salaries, and the pizza maker said to me, ‘If you play with us, I’ll pay you with forty pizzas.’ ‘Good deal,‘ I replied, ‘on two conditions: two ankle braces for every game, and I’ll only play at home. Away games, I hear too many insults and I lose my enthusiasm.’ As a center forward, I scored nine goals and we won the championship. I still have to collect the rest, I’m missing about twenty pizzas.“

Rebellious: how was your whole career?

”Not really rebellious: nonconformist, rather. Becoming a soccer player, when I was already 12, was perhaps the only choice imposed on me. I was a promising tennis player, but at the time it was a bit like golf, an elite sport: you had to have the financial means to travel around the world, but my dad was a mechanic and my mom was a housewife, so I said yes to Russi and at 15 I was already playing in the Under-19s.”

And at 22, Milan chose him.

“In Modena and Ravenna, I had already had three coaches—Ulivieri, Delneri, and Guidolin—who, for my style of play, were even better coaches than Sacchi. With Capello’s Milan, I only did one tour, six games, but there were people like Baresi, Costacurta, and Maldini. I realized I wouldn’t get a single minute of playing time, so I asked to go play elsewhere.“

But when he plays against Milan, it always hurts him.

”A knee goal with Reggina; the 16th penalty, decisive, in the quarterfinals of the Coppa Italia in 1995; the Italian Super Cup with Parma in 1999.“

More than forty years ago, he was a tennis prodigy, and today he is one of the strongest players in padel.

”But in padel, I’ve never won a match with a heart attack in progress. August 2024, tennis tournament in Milano Marittima, while I’m playing I feel a sharp pain in my stomach, then a sword stuck in my left arm, but I don’t stop: there are alarm bells that you don’t want to hear, you do everything you can to think that it’s not what you think. You can’t imagine the insults from the heads of the cardiology department in Ravenna: ‘You risked ischemia, you know that?’. ‘But I won 6-2, 6-1’. That heart attack was a wonderful experience.”

In what sense?

“Perhaps for the first time, I prioritized what really matters: the people who care about me, the pleasure of having them close. And I looked back: the mistakes I made, the choices I could have made. But I felt very peaceful, thinking back on my career: a soccer player, yes, but also a man who wanted to live his 20s, 25s, even 30s.”

Unconventional, indeed.

“I was one of the first to wear an earring. I wanted it so much that I made a vow to have an excuse to get one. Michele Padovano took me to get a tattoo in Reggio Emilia. I bleached my hair to copy Vialli, who had gone blonde for Sampdoria’s championship. I got mohawk haircuts, even colored ones.”

And he had his toenails painted red and blue when he played for Bologna.

“The summer after we finished seventh: the beach at Milano Marittima was full of people from Bologna and word got around. But look, I still have them, at almost 55 years old. Last summer they were black. And there’s a reason for that: we footballers have disgusting nails, and just as women are looked at from behind, we are looked at from the front. It’s a matter of decency.”

And when you used to go out in a kilt?

“Or in my pajama pants at the disco: I would sleep until midnight, enter through the back entrance of the Pineta, chat with Bobo Vieri and friends, and go back to bed. That was a cult place for many people’s careers, and that’s where I met my ex-wife, with whom I had two children and opened a clothing store in Prague.”

Separated?

“In the process of separating for two years. It’s a life experience: the Catholic religion teaches you that you have to get married, but it doesn’t teach you how to separate.“

He also played alongside Bobo Vieri at Atletico Madrid.

”It was there, with 24 goals in 24 games, that Christian became Bobo Vieri. I arrived too because Arrigo Sacchi wanted me. We lived together in his apartment, which was Esnaider’s house, but it only lasted a month. After the training camp, we were in Milano Marittima, waiting to return to Madrid for the Atletico-Lazio friendly, but we found the highway congested, missed our flight from Venice, and arrived a day late. Sacchi sends us to the stands, where the Lazio executives end up besieging Bobo: he wanted to stay, they convinced him that evening.“

Complicated relationship with Sacchi, eh?

”I had done well in Bologna and he called Ulivieri for information, who, biting his tongue, gave me lots of compliments. But when he called me, I said to Arrigo: ‘Coach, if you want a good player, I’m here, but I also want to have fun: if you want, judge me on the field, not for what I do off it. Twenty minutes later, Renzaccio called me: he enunciated the phrase ‘You’re an asshole’ so much that it took him twenty seconds to finish it. ‘Now call him back, say you’re happy to go and be good’. Social media hadn’t changed everything yet: back then, the less you showed yourself, the better; today, it’s the opposite.”

Halfway through that season in Spain, he did everything he could to return to Bologna.

“After the first half of the season, I was exhausted: the training pace was unsustainable, Sacchi had changed my position four times, I couldn’t sleep at night because I dreamed about offside calls. And then I was spotted by Hola! magazine, I ended up on the cover with a Spanish star, and Arrigo snapped. ‘Mister, I’ve been good so far, but this was too good: I couldn’t resist.’ And he said, ‘How can you talk like that? Didn’t you come to Spanish class?’ ‘Night school, you learn better that way.'”

After Atletico, Parma. The joy: the only cup he lifted in his career.

“Privileged regardless. Even back then, Malesani, who I don’t know why was ‘branded’ with a negative image, taught the kind of soccer that everyone plays today. And I played in front of Buffon, with Thuram and Cannavaro alongside me: I could go out in the evening, as long as they didn’t. At that time, Juve also got in touch. Massimo Brambati, who worked for Moggi, asked me for a meeting: he would have signed me if I had given the power of attorney to his son Alessandro, but I was happy with Giovanni Branchini and I didn’t like certain dynamics.”

The stain: the nandrolone affair.

“Perhaps the only sad page in my career: five months out and a $50 million fine, I found myself with my back against the wall and defenseless. They had given us something, perhaps a substance contained in supplements: me, Davids, Couto, Guardiola, more than twenty players in total, too many to be a coincidence. I remember with a smile the humanity of the prosecutor who accused me, Aiello: for him, the important thing was to understand how we had been given this nandrolone.”

The strongest player I’ve ever played with? It would be easy to say Baggio, but for me, what matters most is what you win: Cannavaro won the Ballon d’Or, but he also won the World Cup.“

Davide Torrisi

The six months at Marseille?

”Two months, actually, because then I ‘escaped’. I told the Marseille guys that I had to have screws removed from my knee in Italy, and I told Sacchi, who had loaned me out, that the coach didn’t see me. From March, I took a four-month vacation in Saint Tropez: I had a lot of friends there…”

Things went better with Reggina.

“Sacchi, Foti, and I talk about it in a room, and Arrigo celebrates me as if I were a phenomenon. I say to him, ‘Director, can you step out for a moment?’ I look at Foti: ‘If it were all true, I’d be a starter at Parma: he just wants to get rid of me.’ So, Lillo and I develop a great relationship, and we save ourselves for two years. But Bologna was in my heart.“

Trezeguet played first time, no dribbling, but that ‘elastic’ movement. But the most complicated was Pippo Inzaghi: in our day, they sometimes didn’t blow the whistle for offside.”

Stefano Torrisi

And he returned, finding Mazzone.

“Perhaps the greatest motivator I’ve ever had, he trusted and brought out the best in mature players: me, Petruzzi, Marocchi, Fontolan, Signori. They had spoken badly of me to him and he told me so, then admitted he had changed his mind.”

The strongest player you played with?

“The easiest thing would be to say Baggio, but for me, what matters most is what you win: Cannavaro won the Ballon d’Or, but also the World Cup.”

The ‘craziest’?

“More than anything else, I had friends to hang out with. Me, Bosi, Doni, Olivares, and Scapolo in Bologna: we weren’t bad-looking, rich, or famous, but living in that city was a dream.“

So let’s talk about the craziest thing you did?

”Once we went too far with the masseur, Balbino Spadoni: we stripped him naked and tied him to a pole on the field in Sestola.” .

The hardest to mark?

“Trezeguet: he only played first time, no dribbling, but he had this ‘elastic’ movement. But the most complicated to mark was Pippo Inzaghi: in our day, they didn’t always blow the whistle for offside.”

The national team was a dream come true.

“Four call-ups with Cesare Maldini, who had me in the Under-21 team, and one appearance, the World Cup warm-up tournament in Paris in 1997: it was a dream, and I achieved it. For me, consistency was never important, but achieving my goals was. And I had the career that was meant to be.“

But given how he played, would Torrisi be in the national team today?

”In today’s football, I think so. I started as a left midfielder, but Ciapina Ferrario turned me into a defender in Modena because when I scored goals in games, I didn’t want to lose and went back to defend. With Ulivieri as stopper, I became a central defender: they called me the new Baresi, but my role model was Fernando Hierro. Technically, I was similar to Bonucci: ambidextrous, no fear of having the ball at my feet, good vision, not as strong in the air as him, but faster in open space. Rather: how would today’s players fare in yesterday’s football, with yesterday’s rules and ‘sticks’? Today, Ronaldo the Phenomenon would still score three goals per game, I guarantee it.” 

You have a UEFA coaching license: is that idea dead?

“It never really got off the ground. It’s too exhausting, you have to give up too many things, and Coverciano churns out too many coaches: 10% coach on merit, 40% on name, and 50% because they’re part of a ‘system’. And I, otherwise I wouldn’t be a nonconformist, don’t have any sponsors…”