Ex-Roma midfielder Toninho Cerezo, among the players that lost the Champions League final to Liverpool in penalties, talks about his career, Totti, and more.
As reported by Il Corriere dello Sport: ‘Wearing the Roma jersey was an honour. It makes you part of a community, something you only understand if you’ve been through it. We came inches from a ‘Scudetto’ and Champions League victory, but we did win two Italian Cups. Unfortunately Eriksson was the coach back then, so I had to leave. I did end up having the last laugh, though: In our last game, the final versus Sampdoria, he teased me by giving me just a couple of minutes of playing time in the final minutes. I ended up scoring and saying farewell to the fans with a victory lap’.
Roma-Liverpool and Roma-Lecce the games to forget: ‘I don’t believe the story of Paulo Roberto Falcao refusing to take a penalty in the Champions League final. It’s too painful of a memory for me to talk to him about it. Roma-Lecce? I was disqualified, but I doubt my teammates would have lost the game on purpose. That team was unlucky, just look at Ancelotti’s injuries. He was an intelligent player, but never would I have thought he’d become a coach, he was so silent…’.
To end the interview he comments on Totti: ‘I stopped playing at 40, but Totti can play past that. Today’s sport medicine is much more advanced than what it was 30 years ago’.
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