Armando Picchi had little time to enjoy that splendid family but along with all he gave to football as a natural leader who claimed many trophies, he left the legacy of a beautiful love at first sight. The father of Italian sportswriting Gianni Brera gave thousands of player ratings in his life. Only once did he assign a 10. That was in the European Cup final between Inter and Real Madrid at Vienna’s Prater Stadium when Herrera’s beat the Real Madrid side of Puskas and Di Stefano. Some of the greatest forwards in history, they weren’t able to do much when faced by Armando Picchi as he earned a well-deserved 10.
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He still looked at the cover pages though. In the 1960s without video games and limited television, the long retreats imposed by Helenio Herrera were made more bearable with a large selection of newspapers and magazines from the newsstands of Appiano Gentile. It just so happened that Armando Picchi was once struck by a women’s magazine where as usual there was a beautiful woman on the front. In an era without airbrushing, it was authentic beauty. It stuck in Armando’s mind and after a few days of using all of his investigative techniques, he got the model’s phone number from the publisher. From then on, everything followed for a man as determined and charming as the captain of the Grande Inter. Meeting, courtship, marriage to Francesco and two wonderful children.
A man for the front pages. In these days, it’s not rare for an Inter captain to be on the cover of a magazine as Zanetti and Icardi have shown. A quiet man like Armando Picchi who captained the Grande Inter was there less often in those different times, despite lifting the European Cup and Intercontinental Cup twice.
