Honor to you brother Andrea Fortunato. We hope that there is a football team in Heaven so you can continue to be happy, running after a ball.
Gianluca Vialli climbs the altar as Juventus captain, as a man and as a teammate. That young full-back who remembered Antonio Cabrini for his hair and the way he played is no longer there. At 23 he was unable to win the game against leukemia. It is April 25, 1995 , his Lady a month later will win that coveted championship after nine years of fasting. A year passes and that team will rise to the throne of Europe. Carrying inside the memory and the traces of that long-haired boy who ran along the band.
Almost a quarter of a century later, Andrea Fortunato relives in the words of those who knew him, in the clips of the matches in which he had made himself noticed so much that he deserved Juventus and the national team. And even the land of him did not remove the memory of him. Castellabate , a town in the Salerno area known for the film “Welcome to the South”, has decided to name a street after it. Via Andrea Fortunato will lead directly to the football museum dedicated to him. The announcement comes from the Polito Foundation , an active part in the dissemination of the blood passport for medical prevention among athletes. The mayor of the city, Costabile Spinelli , recalled the former Juventus player:
It was right to do it for what he has given to our football and for the values ​​transmitted during his short career
. Young people may not know him. But it is right that they know who that promising talent was who was going up and down the band, running on that lawn that he had always dreamed of. Andrea Fortunato was born in Salerno on July 26, 1971. He grows up in the youth teams of Como , then launched in the first team by Eugenio Bersellini . Taken from Genoa , after a spell at Pisa , he stands out in the 1992-1993 season, together with another emerging player, Christian Panucci .
Noticed by Trapattoni , he makes the big leap inJuventus in the summer of 1993, the same in which a certain Alessandro Del Piero arrives in Turin . The first few months are very positive, a regular starter in the Juventus defense, he also scores a goal at the Olimpico against Lazio . He immediately forms a group with his teammates, becoming a great friend of Fabrizio Ravanelli, Gianluca Vialli and Antonio Conte . He is also called up for the national team by coach Sacchi for the match against Estonia. Then the first health problems that affect the performance. The ultras ignore the reason and contest him (then they will apologize) for his alleged attitude of a cleaner. There was something else behind that weariness that haunted him.
The diagnosis is clear: leukemia. Fortunato does not give up, he fights, he is only 23 years old but his head is firmly planted on his shoulders. The team is close to him, the therapy seems to rekindle hope. But that April 25, 1995 pneumonia was fatal to him. He is not even 24 years old, he throws the whole Juventus world into despair that in his drama relives that of Scirea , who died a few years earlier in a car accident. Gianluca Vialli remembers him at the funeral in the cathedral of Salerno.
