Sabatini: 'Roma, sex and suicide'

By Football Italia staff

Roma sporting director Walter Sabatini released a surprisingly intimate interview discussing his thoughts on sex and his suicidal tendencies.

The 61-year-old was at several points touted to leave the Giallorossi this season, and some believed he wanted to take a sabbatical as he was under tremendous stress.

The Gazzetta dello Sport published an unusual interview in which Sabatini discussed his life in terms of his beloved novel, Gabriel Garcia Marquez's '100 Years of Solitude'.

In the South American masterpiece, the character Jose Arcadio Buendia is stunned to discover ice for the first time.

“Myself, I have yet to discover ice, perhaps,” he told La Gazzetta. “But I remember when I was nine and my grandfather, who worked in the foundry at Marsciano, told me about a kid called Gianni Rivera who was good at playing football.

“He may never even have seen him, but he made me curious enough to stop one Sunday in front of a TV and abandon forever the cowboys-and-indians games. From that moment on I could think of nothing but football.

“At the time I used to wait and let the wind dry my sweat so my parents wouldn't know I'd played football, because they didn't like how it ruined my clothes. I convinced them to take me to Juventina and that was the beginning of both my happiness and self-harm.”

Sabatini was also asked, in a more personal question, what his relationship with sex was.

“Sex saved my life. I see it everywhere. The goal, for example, is penetration. I've always had desperate sex, of the type that heals pain.

“Men have a hormonal problem. When the hormones are satisfied, you can also quieten the voices of greed and arrogance. I was hoping those voices could be quietened more quickly with me, but it didn't happen.

“Sex lets you do things in excess and helps you tolerate the rest. To this day I can't stand losing.

“I am like [Marquez's] Coronel Aureliano Buendia, who loses not because he fails strategically, but only because he becomes lonely and nasty in his solitude.

“My plight is written in numbers and statistics. Of course there are other factors too, but with Roma I feel our problems in my guts.

“I've often been ambushed, but that doesn't surprise me. Friendship for me is a silent process, I don't really cultivate it. Even when it comes to my brother, whom I love enormously, I can go without speaking with him for three months. Phone calls that last more than 15 seconds are unhealthy for me.

“Suicide? I already kill myself every day. I always had very little respect for my own life. At first it was because I adored my own psycho-physical abilities: I thought I could do everything, and I still think that, so much so that I am unsuccessfully suicidal.

“My greatest regret? I think I wasn't good at loving people. Some women deserved a bit more tenderness, starting from my mother Lina. But I also held everything inside.”

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