Paolo Condo: What I learned co-writing Francesco Totti’s memoir

Working with a superstar is a hard job, because what is normal for him is absolutely special, and often incredible, for you. For nine months, I interviewed Francesco Totti, the best-known - and simply the best -footballer in Roma’s history.

As our conversations cruised from his childhood in a densely populated district to the glory days of the 2006 World Cup, there was not a single session without a surprise, a mouth agape, an ‘are-you-sure?’ that snatched a smile from the Capitano.

The night before the final in Berlin, for example, none of the Azzurri was able to sleep. No-one? Really?

“Del Piero maybe,” Totti said. “At two o’clock he retired to his room, joking that he had played a lot of finals and for this reason he wasn’t so excited.

"We threw him slippers and pillows, continuing our PlayStation tournaments. I fell asleep at 6am, sleeping three hours before the morning’s light training. Three hours more in the afternoon, before leaving for the stadium, were absolutely decisive. Not only for me - for everybody."

The book came out at the end of September and ‘Un Capitano’ has topped the bestseller charts in Italy since the first day. The Colosseum was opened for the release party—an incredible experience because the historic arena has never been used for such an event.

Luca Ward, known here for dubbing Russell Crowe’s ‘Gladiator’ lines into Italian, read from the book.

Honestly, it was all almost too much to digest.

Totti is beloved by his city - and what a city - for never having betrayed her.

He had three chances to move to a different club during his career: AC Milan when he was a child; Sampdoria when Carlos Bianchi didn’t appreciate his training habits; and Real Madrid, in 2005, when Florentino Perez was ready to spend a lot of money for him, to which Totti answered, “No thanks. My place is not Madrid, my place is Rome.”

Yet Totti paid a high price to stay in Rome for his entire career. He won only one Scudetto and two Italian Cups - too little for one of the best players of the first decade of this century. He added the World Cup, of course, but never really competed for the Champions League, arriving two times in the quarter-final only to receive a hard lesson from Manchester United on both occasions.

For other Italian champions like Paolo Maldini or Alessandro Del Piero, spending their whole careers with the same club was a natural choice: their squads were the strongest and they won plenty of titles with Milan and Juventus, respectively.

Totti’s story is different, and people understand that.

In a funny way, it is his relative lack of titles, not an abundance of them, for which he is loved beyond human limits in Rome and very respected in all other stadiums.

Click here to read the rest of Paolo Condo’s article about Francesco Totti on The Athletic website.