Franco Baresi according to Gianni Rivera. Interview

It was 23 April 1978. In Verona, at the Marcantonio Bentegodi Stadium, Hellas were preparing to play against Milan.

That day, Nils Liedholm told his players what they already knew: “Aldo (Maldera, ed.) is still unwell and so won’t be playing. Neither will Fulvio (Collovati, ed.)”. They all knew it.

That day, however, none of the men in that changing room could have known that something extraordinary was happening. They couldn’t have known even when the manager rattled off the starting line-up quickly, in one breath: “Albertosi-Baresi-Bet-Boldini-Sabadini-Morini-Buriani-Capello-Bigon-Rivera-Tosetto”. Baresi? Everyone had expected to hear ‘Turone’ called out, certainly not the surname of that curly-haired lad with the beardless but stern face, whom everyone called ‘Piscinin’ and who, up until that moment, had never even sat on the bench.

That day, however, Nils Liedholm had entered the Rossoneri dressing room with a defiant look on his face. He was still angry about the defeat against Atalanta a week earlier, which had seen his team drop from joint second place to fourth. It was a match in which the Rossoneri’s three-man defence – comprising Aldo Bet, Aldo Maldera and Maurizio Turone that day – performed at its worst. Maldera was sidelined due to a niggle; Bet was indispensable; so Turone paid the price, symbolically – that very same Turone who, a few years later and wearing a different shirt, went down in Italian football history for a disallowed goal: ‘er go’ de Turone’.

On that day, the approximately thirty thousand spectators in the stands could not have known that they were witnessing a glimpse of the Rossoneri’s future – a future that, as it turned out almost a decade later, would prove to be a very happy one – in that stadium, just over one hundred and fifty kilometres from San Siro.

That day, after four very difficult minutes for Milan, Franco Baresi won the ball back, advanced a few metres and passed it to the captain, Gianni Rivera.

That day, Gianni Rivera could not have known that this curly-haired, beardless but stern-faced lad would wear the captain’s armband – which he himself had worn for thirteen years – for the next fifteen years. Yet he had partly realised that this player, who – due to a historic error (though this would only come to light later) – had been fielded as a right-back, was destined for greatness. “Right from the first time he was called up to the first team, we realised straight away that he was a brilliant lad; he was eighteen. It was clear he had great talent. And he demonstrated it throughout his career,” recalls Gianni Rivera in “Il Foglio Sportivo”. “He was truly a great player; he wrote a chapter in Milan’s history. It’s a shame he left us so soon.” Franco Baresi died yesterday, Friday 31 July 2026. “He was a wonderful person. He knew how to make people love him, and people returned the warmth he gave them.” A down-to-earth person, who would still blush when people recognised him in the street, called him ‘Capitano’ or praised him for the player he had been, because “he had a genuine humility; he didn’t boast about himself, he found it difficult to talk about himself, but if asked a question, he always replied kindly”.

He tiptoed into the changing room, asking permission to enter, even though within the club – and beyond – people were already predicting great things for Franco Baresi. On the pitch, however, he took to the field with the right attitude, already a leader even before he officially became one. “Baresi’s debut was more than positive: he never let his nerves get the better of him; he was precise in his defensive interventions and timely in his runs into the attack. For him, a regular in the Under-21 national team, the coaches foresee a future even brighter than that of his brother, who has himself become Inter’s key player,” wrote Guido Lajolo the following day in the Corriere.

That day, it became clear that what Gianni Rivera and his teammates had glimpsed in training was indeed true. “Back then, we did play in training, but never for real, so it was hard to gauge a player’s true ability. We could see his movements; he knew how to mark and anticipate the play. We saw him pass and shoot, and he also had excellent technical skills. We only discovered a player’s true ability on Sundays, and that Sunday we realised that, despite his youth, he could have a brilliant career,” he says. “He started so early that it seemed almost impossible he could make his debut at that age. Yet I knew he’d make it; the same thing had happened to me several years earlier. I told myself: if it worked out for me, it would work out for him too, even though the role was completely different and carried greater responsibility than that of a midfielder,” explains the former Rossoneri number 10.

Gianni Rivera was captain of Milan for thirteen years. On the day he retired from football, he handed the captain’s armband to Alberto Bigon, who passed it on to Aldo Maldera, who in turn handed it to Fulvio Collovati. Then, in 1982, it was draped over Franco Baresi’s left arm, where it remained until the end of the 1996–1997 season – the season of ‘Piscinin’s’ final match, having been unanimously acclaimed simply as ‘the Captain’.

Gianni Rivera knows what it feels like to wear those colours – red and black – and to wear that piece of fabric around his arm. “You feel a sense of responsibility from the very first moment you put on that shirt. You feel even more responsible when they put the captain’s armband on you. That’s the moment when you have to prove your sense of responsibility. Franco Baresi always felt that responsibility; it was second nature to him.” This is another reason why Franco Baresi has always been a guiding figure: “Being an intelligent lad and a talented footballer, it was easy for him to show his teammates the right way forward.”

When he bid farewell to football, Milan retired his shirt, number 6. San Siro dedicated a giant banner to him: ‘6 forever’. Yet, to honour his memory as he deserves, perhaps it would be fitting to bring that number 6 shirt back onto the pitch, just to make it the dream of a few young footballers once more. Gianni Rivera listens carefully: “This should be suggested to Milan’s current American owners; I wouldn’t be able to suggest anything to them myself because I don’t think they understand much about football.”