Football is in mourning, Sinisa Mihajlovic is dead. Unfortunately it's all true: leukemia didn't give him a chance, it first weakened and then defeated him.
He was 53 years old, with the instinct and strength of a lion. Until a few months ago he coached Bologna and, when the rossoblù club decided to sack him, there was an uprising. Because he, Sinisa, had also returned to the bench with leukemia to save the team which, for the Bolognese, "makes the world tremble". Legacy of a remote past, but with a leader like Mihajlovic at the head it was still worth believing in, at least to try to dream of a better reality.
The news that no one would have wanted to hear was given by the agencies shortly after 3 pm. And those who follow football have mentally reviewed, for a moment, the images of the press conference in which the Warrior announced his illness . But also his prowess as a footballer.
When he played, his free-kicks - powerful and precise - hissed. Goal. At the Olimpico, especially on the Lazio side, they cheered 20 times in 126 matches in front of his prowess. Not just goals. But also assists, played by champions, which for him, a Serbian who became a footballer with the horrors of the Balkan war in his eyes, were an outlet, a sort of relief from a latent pain, too intimate to be told live.
He also gave him a goal to Roma, who drew him from Red Star Belgrade, in 54 appearances from 1992 to 1994. But he didn't leave well with the Giallorossi. Twelve times he celebrated at Samp in 110 matches, 5 at Inter in about twenty before becoming Roberto Mancini's deputy and embarking on a coaching career that from 2008 led him to coach Bologna, Catania (saved after a ride against the wind , a feat that in Sicily will be remembered forever), Fiorentina, Sampdoria, Milan (where he launched a sixteen-year-old Donnarumma in an unfortunate season), Turin, Sporting Lisbon and Bologna again. In Turin he spent the last few seasons seeing Europe, before being saved from Bologna, even with the burden of leukemia that slowly destroyed him.
Sinisa has never hidden her right-wing sympathies. While managing to enter the heart of the most left-wing city in Italy, Bologna. And neither was friendship, even when it was extremely uncomfortable, as in the case of her youthful connection with the war criminal Arkan.
It will be nice to remember his grit on the pitch and on the bench, and that kiss given to Zdenek Zeman, the coach who most of all valued him as a footballer, just over a week ago, on the occasion of the presentation in Rome of the autobiography of the Bohemian master. And it will be wonderful to watch the duet in Sanremo with Ibrahimovic, his close friend, another who had to conquer his life tooth and nail.
The rest is the sad statement of the family, which defines his death "unjust and premature". The Warrior had recently become a grandfather.
«His wife Arianna, with their children Viktorija, Virginia, Miroslav, Dusan and Nikolas, their niece Violante, their mother Vikyorija and their brother Drazen, sadly communicate the unjust and premature death of their exemplary husband, father, son and brother, Sinisa Mihajlovic ». There are no other words.