APPIANO
GENTILE – What a story and what a guest on tonight’s Prima Serata,
the weekly programme on Inter Channel hosted by Edoardo Caldara. In the studio today was Ruben
Sosa: the former Nerazzurri striker lives in Uruguay now but
returns to Italy whenever he can and likes to step back inside a Nerazzurri ‘dimension’ that he has never forgotten (and vice versa).
Born
on 25 April 1966 in Montevideo ("I celebrated my 22nd
birthday yesterday"), Sosa was one of the most emblematic figures of the Inter team between 1992 and 1995. Although the last season was played with a knee that "was
finished by then", his first two years were marvellous: 22 goals in his
first season and 17 in the second, when the team just missed out on
the Scudetto after mounting a late charge and won a UEFA Cup despite everything and everyone. Osvaldo Bagnoli used to say of Sosa: "He
doesn’t know the first thing about football but he always scores!"
"With the balls they use nowadays I could
have had 40 goals a season," Ruben told Inter Channel. "I liked to
shoot from long range. A free kick on the edge of the box was like a
penalty for me. I learnt to shoot when I was 14-15 and we’d practice
hitting the crossbar from the centre of the pitch. I used to say: I aim for the
keeper and then the ball swerves… and the keeper never gets them.
Striking the ball well is a natural gift but you have to practice
every day – until your foot hurts. And you mustn’t be afraid to shoot: the worst thing that can happen is it goes into the stands,
nobody’s going to die…"
The years pass even for the best of us ("Look at
those photos, that’s my brother…") but Ruben still has the same
personality and life philosophy: "If you know how to play football, if
you love it, you train and you’re professional, there’s no pressure
in football. Pressure is for those who go to work and have to bring
money home so that the family can eat. Football has always been about
having fun for me and I think that helped me. When I go back to
Inter the door is always open for me, open to the man, not the
ex-footballer, and that’s nice. I always played for the fans,
I felt like one of them on the pitch and I wanted to see the stands
throbbing with joy."
You can see this and much more tonight with Ruben
Sosa and Edoardo Caldara on Prima Serata, Inter Channel at 21:00.
Don’t miss it!