The full-back has reached the round figure for the number of games with clubs. Between posts on social media and “chatter”, Ale is back for the Champions League
The number one shirt has a series of “twins” scattered around Vitinia, the happy island just an outside shot from the Raccordo where Florenzi returns when he can. Mom Luciana and dad Luigi still live there, in “Vitinia Alta”, the hill that overlooks the town near Rome. There is the original version of the first shirt used among professionals, that of Roma-Sampdoria on 22 May 2011. Against Empoli he reached 400 games.
How far
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Sandrino, a beardless twig with sly and lively eyes, came on for Totti five minutes from the end. He who as a kid used to go to the Olimpico in the early morning to be a ball boy, and then come home with dreamy eyes, in the back seat of a rickety car. “In a few years you will give Totti the ball with your feet,” my father claimed. Florenzi nodded unconvinced, but in the end it went like this. Against Empoli he played 400 games as pros with club teams: 37 in Crotone, 279 in Rome, 14 in Valencia, 36 in Paris and 34 in Milan, where he won the Scudetto earning the reputation of locker room”. His “Maldini redeem me”, shouted in a live Instagram immediately after the victory, convinced the fans and Paolo himself, who in fact locked him up.
Ale, known as Spizzi
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At the Duomo they call him “spizzi”, and he stands for “spizzingrillo”, because there are too many “ales” in the team. At Milanello he brought the “chatter”, the fast gab that is all Roman. Florenzi is like this, instinct and personality: he scores goals under the South and runs to the stands to hug his grandmother. He sees Ter Stegen off the posts and stings Barcelona with a lob. There’s a high ball in the middle of the area and it’s a bicycle kick. Last summer they had given him “boiled meat”, but he didn’t say a word. Also because the start wasn’t easy: an injury excluded him from the starting eleven of the European champion Italy. Knowing him a little, however, he must have said “who cares, the group counts”. And that’s why his return is a godsend for the locker room. On the eve of Tottenham-Milan, during a bull run like many others, he teased Gabbia in a playful way, dampening the tension as he knows how to do. Against Napoli it will be fundamental in this sense.
Swiss Army knife
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Ductility. Rudi Garcia has always called it “the Swiss Army Knife”, one you put in your pocket to open all doors. Winger, midfielder, full-back, right or left makes no difference. In Crotone, once, he even scored from a free kick. It was his first experience away from home and he enjoyed going fishing with a Roman friend, Simone Mirante. More than ten years later the boy has become a man, got married and has a family all of his own, but he has never forgotten his origins. This is why the first shirt of his life has several “twins” around Vitinia. One at the Locanda, the restaurant near his home, and yet another in the bar on Via Sarsina where he occasionally shows up for a coffee. Who knows where he will put the number 400.
April 9 – 1.48pm
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