“Totò, Totò”. I was 10 when Schillaci scored with Austria and no one around me shouted “goal”. Simply “Totò!”. At first I didn’t understand, I wasn’t even 11 yet. Among other things I wondered: “Why does my father, a die-hard Inter fan, celebrate a goal by a Juventus player?”. Many more celebrations arrived, always the same: “Totò, Totò”. Czechoslovakia, Uruguay, Eire, Argentina, England. Then everything became clearer to me. Champions don’t have a shirt. And in that hot summer of the 90s Totò wasn’t just a footballer, he had become a symbol: those 173 centimetres had brought Palermo, and the Cep, to the centre of Italy and the world. The whole nation had discovered that Palermo could also give joy. Not just murdered people.

A part of us dies

And this morning when Totò left we all cry. We cry for the footballer he was. For the man he was. A humble man who remained simple despite his fame and the money he earned (and never squandered). But we also cry for ourselves. Let’s say it. For what Schillaci represented. Because with him that part of us that still saw itself as young, that rejoiced on those magical nights, dies. But above all what makes us sad, we football lovers, is the awareness that it is that dimension that is dead. The one in which children lay down on the asphalt to recover a ball that had ended up under a car and who returned home sweaty and covered in grease. Here, Schillaci represents the symbol of that dimension. The dirty child who came close to the World Cup and the Golden Ball. For years an example for many children who grew up in the suburbs of Palermo.

Schillaci International

But not only that. Schillaci was also an international phenomenon. And we don’t want to be profane when we say that he contributed to “cleaning up” the image of Palermo and Sicily in the world. After Italia ’90, in a conversation with a foreigner as soon as we got to the most classic of “where are you from?” and the answer was “Palermo, Sicily” the first word of the interlocutor was no longer “mafia”, but “Schillaci!”. Which was followed by a proud smile from us.

Schillaci’s greatness was also knowing how to deal with the post-career period in the right way. Without ever forgetting his origins. The Japanese yen were invested close to home, in his Ribolla. There are many people he helped financially. Always in silence. He also indulged in television appearances and participation in reality shows, such as his adventure as a castaway on Isola dei Famosi. But always bringing out his simplicity and his self-irony for cultural flaws (“At school my report card resembled a Totocalcio card, there were all 1s and 2s”, he said during the program Back To School on Italia 1). Never a controversy, never an over the top phrase. Even never having worn the Palermo shirt has always remained a regret, not an accusation or a poisonous phrase against the club in question. Victimhood was not his thing.

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