Milan, Montolivo in the photo Ansa
MILAN – "I was sentenced to stop playing football at 33". Montolivo, who is now 34 years old, talks about how his career as a professional footballer has essentially ended a year ago. The former midfielder, during a long interview with Ivan Zazzaroni for Il Corriere dello Sport, gets angry with Milan , with his old coach Gattuso and with his teammates who have practically abandoned him to his destiny thinking only to their personal interests.
The following are the statements made by Montolivo to Ivan Zazzaroni. "I'm 34 but I was forced to stop playing football a year ago. At Thirty-three years – he specifies – I last played in May 2018, at Atleti Azzurri d'Italia, the same stadium in which I had started sixteen years before. Two, seven, seven. Two seasons in Atalanta, seven in Fiorentina and seven in Milan, although the last year and a half has been an ordeal: marginalized, answers never given, truths circumvented or denied, strange forgetfulness, carelessness. Grudge? No, I don't hold a grudge. Those who have been wrong with me, those who have disrespected me, and repeatedly, will probably come to terms with their conscience ".
In addition to damage, insult. Montolivo reveals a surreal dialogue with his former coach Gattuso. "In the end I also received the compliments of the coach, and do you know what he added? That he would have been crazy in my place. And I felt cheated once more. "
Montolivo goes into detail and explains to Corriere dello Sport the sporting ordeal he has experienced in recent months: "At the end of a season in which in January I had practically stopped playing not because of my will or physical problems, the coach told me that I will be part of the group while losing centrality. I agree to get back in the game, I am in the last year of the contract.
Shortly before the departure for the tour in the United States, however, I receive a text message from the team manager, the former referee Romeo: "You do not come". Motivations and explanations, zero. Elliott takes over from the Chinese, at the end of July Leonardo and Maldini take the place of Mirabelli also inheriting my situation. Leonardo somehow reassures me and from that moment I stop being considered available ".
After making it clear that the delivery of the captain's armband was not his choice but of the company, Montolivo closes his interview with the Corriere dello Sport expressing his disappointment at the behavior of his teammates: "In today's football everyone thinks for himself , these are the seasons of precariousness, of spaces to be conquered and not given up. Solidarity, the sense of the group, stuff of the past. And anyway they couldn't get anything. I myself, after a first meeting, stopped chasing empty words: the facts were enough for me ”.
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Source: Blitz Quotidiano