President Marotta pays tribute to Sandro Mazzola at his funeral

“Dear Ilaria, Valentina, Alessandro and Paolo, I want to address you directly and thank you for giving me the opportunity, on this occasion, to remember your beloved father. It is deeply moving to be here with you all, and with all those who were unable to attend the ceremony. There are so many of us, a reflection of the affection we have always had for Sandro and his family. Sandro Mazzola joined the Nerazzurri family as a young man and chose to make Inter his home for life. In many ways, that choice tells the story of who he was. Seventeen seasons, one shirt, at a time when football already offered countless different paths. He stayed because he understood something that feels increasingly rare today: belonging is not a limitation, but a form of freedom. That bond did not end with his final match or when he hung up his boots. Sandro never really left Inter. He remained at the Club as a director, serving these colours with the same commitment and sense of duty he had shown on the pitch. He was six years old when the Superga tragedy took his father, Valentino, captain of the Grande Torino. A name that carried enormous weight. Sandro bore that legacy with pride, never using it as an excuse, and turned both the loss and the burden into a promise. He never tried to live in his father’s shadow; he simply wanted to be worthy of him. And he achieved that in the best possible way by becoming his own man. When President Angelo Moratti handed him his first pay check as a footballer, Sandro took it home to his mother, Emilia. She looked at the amount and could hardly believe it: “That’s a lot of money. They must have made a mistake.” Sandro had grown up understanding the value of sacrifice, and perhaps that is why he never stopped seeing football as a gift. In the Nerazzurri shirt, he wrote some of the most unforgettable pages in the Club’s history. He was a leading figure in Helenio Herrera’s Grande Inter under President Angelo Moratti, winning four Scudetti, two European Cups and two Intercontinental Cups. In the 1964 final in Vienna, he scored twice against Real Madrid as Inter were crowned champions of Europe. That team did more than just win, it changed the course of football history, and Sandro was one of its defining faces and talents. Yet the true strength of that Inter side lay not only in the trophies they won, but in the bond President Angelo Moratti had created. Before they were champions, they were a family, men united by something greater than any one of them. Sandro understood that. He did not play for himself, but for his team-mates, for the shirt and for the Club he called home. At Inter, the collective always came before the individual, and winning meant, above all, winning together. Sandro could never be defined by numbers or positions. He was a No. 9 without being a centre-forward, a No. 8 without being a midfielder. He preferred talent to labels, imagination to rigid systems. He did not have the build or bearing people usually associate with a great champion. As has been written in recent days, he was a kind of prodigy that logic alone could not explain slight in stature, yet capable of making all of us feel like champions. And alongside the extraordinary footballer was a man tenacious, dignified and always ready to stand up for his team-mates, never lowering his gaze. He was also a fair and honourable rival. He was just 20 when, on 24 February 1963, he played his first derby against AC Milan, scoring after only 13 seconds. From then on, the derby became his greatest stage, playing against a rival who would also become a friend. I think of his friendship with Gianni Rivera, built on both rivalry and mutual respect. With Italy, he won the European Championship in 1968 and reached the World Cup final in 1970, finishing his international career with 70 appearances and 22 goals. Above all, though, Sandro was a humble man. When Inter secured the Second Star in 2024, he was over 80 and had already achieved more than enough to rest on his legacy. Yet he still experienced the derby on 22 April 2024, the night Inter clinched the Scudetto, simply as a fan. He was one of us. And when he spoke about it, he did so in the plural: we had been the first to bring the Star to Milano, and now we were the first to earn the Second. The next day, he said: “My heart is still racing. That shirt has even more colour now.” A man who had won everything and could still feel that same excitement as a boy. That was part of what made him so special. In May, he returned to the San Siro pitch alongside his team-mates from the First Star, Gianfranco Bedin, Renato Cappellini and Aristide Guarneri. The Nerazzurri faithful welcomed him home. In November, we celebrated his 82nd birthday together, with so many former Inter greats gathered around the table. It was a simple occasion, with Sandro not treated as a monument of the past, but simply as one of the family. Perhaps only those who have truly made history can carry it with such ease and humility. Sandro leaves us three legacies that no record book can possibly capture: the loyalty of a one-club man, the courage to turn pain into strength, and the humility of someone who never saw himself as a monument. That is what turns a champion into a true symbol of a club. Sandro was exactly that, and he always will be. As President, I also feel both the weight and the privilege of a responsibility that belongs to me and to everyone who leads this Club: to preserve its memory and to pass it on. As Cicero wrote, ‘The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.’ A Club is not great simply because of the trophies it has won, but because of what it is able to hand down. The greater the Club, the more it can carry its past with it into the future. That is why we must never only teach the boys in our Academy how to play football. We must also tell them about men like Sandro. Memory is not something to be left gathering dust in a museum, it is a lesson that lives on. From Sandro, they should learn the humility of never believing you have already made it, respect for team-mates and opponents, the sacrifice that comes before every joy, the value of hard work, and what it truly means to belong to these colours. These are colours that are not simply worn, but carried within you. Champions come and go, but examples endure. And as long as there is a boy who pulls on this shirt and remembers Sandro, Sandro will never truly be gone. His values will live on in every one of them, each time they take to the pitch in these colours. To his family, I say this: your grief is ours too, and you will always have our love and support. Men like Sandro never truly leave us. They live on in the nights at San Siro, in the stories fathers tell their children, and in every young player who pulls on these colours with a dream of wearing them for life. Thank you, Sandro, for everything you taught us and everything you gave us. Forever one of our own. ”