THE ANIMAL INSIDE ME

For the Spaniards, Rino "Gatusso" is a rough and unstylish player, but the Rossonero midfielder's tenacity is taking down these prejudices. Daily newspaper El Pais went to interview him.

When they tell him he is not a very technical player, Rino Gattuso doesn't beat around the bush, but responds with his usual sharpness and self-awareness: "Sometimes I look at my feet and think: 'Damn you, I can never get anything good to happen from you...'. I always tell Ancelotti: 'Imagine if I had good feet, we would not know where to put all the trophies...'. There's people like Kaká who are born phenomenons and people like me who have to build themselves up from scratch, working with passion, passion, and more passion."

Little does it matter, then, that on Spanish daily El Pais regarding the Rossonero midfielder the title was: "Tengo dentro un animal" (There's an animal inside me). That enraged tiger which animates every game played by Rino Gattuso is something to be proud of, and transcends the traditional clichés regarding the typical Italian player who is ugly to see play: "I haven't changed. The market makes it so that I earn in a month what my father has earned in a lifetime, but the only difference compared to when I started is in my bank account. My drive and my desire to play football have remained the same."
Rino Gattuso is now more than ever a player worthy of Milan, a man who knows codes that are impossible to break, a footballer who endures despite the presence of class players like Kaká, Pirlo and Seedorf: "The key is in the dressing room, there are no great secrets. When you see someone like Maldini who at 39 years of age does all he can to recover to play a Champions League final, who works like a madman, and spits blood and sweat... Only an idiot would not understand why he is an example to all of us. Seedorf has won 4 Champions Leagues with 3 different teams, but I saw him cry of emotion after last year's semifinal with Manchester. You realise that in this club there are some important values. Milan have their Dna, Berlusconi has transmitted it. We are a team who finds motivations to do well even when things aren't going well. At the start, when I tried to be clever with referees or opponents, they called me up to tell me to control myself: I was wearing the Milan shirt and I could not afford to do stupid things."

Aside from the footballer, there is the man, a great man, who speaks only when he has something to say, refuses to utter banalities and continues to launch messages to the new generations: "Young people have changed a lot. Before, when you were 13-14 all you cared about was getting a girlfriend. Now they only look for a cheap thrill. There have always been these types of people, but they were a minority. The fun was playing football on the beach and then going to see whether it was possible to play another game in the evening. Today all this no longer exists, in southern Italy there is no longer a society with values, there is no respect."

Whether the football purists like it or not, there could be no Milan without the grit and tenacity of Rino Gattuso.