The Giuseppe Meazza of despair. Barcelona had just turned the 88th minute, and it seemed that the series was taken, and Inter Milan, condemned to watch the final on television.
But in the 93rd minute, when many no longer believed, Francesco Acerbi, with his less skilled leg, surpassed Ronald Araujo and goalkeeper Wojciech Szczęsny and sent the ball to the bottom of the network. The goal took the game to the extension and gave life to the Italian team, which ended up sealing his pass to the UEFA Champions League final.
At 37, Acerbi not only signed one of the most important goals of his career, but incarnated, once again, what has been his life: a stubborn resistance against all prognosis.
Acerbi was born in Vizzolo Predabissi, on the outskirts of Milan, and grew in direct contact with football. Integrated the “Fossa Dei Leoni”, Grupo Ultra del Milan, a club he loved. But far from the early trajectory of other figures, its path was irregular.
At age 14 he left Athletic Civil and went on to play amateur football with friends. He competed again at age 20 in the C2 series. At 22 he was in series B, and with 23 he debuted in series A with Chievo Verona. “I did it for my father, not for me. We had a love and hate relationship,” he recalled in 2016 in an interview with The Guardian.
His father, Roberto, had suffered seven stroke and died in 2012, just four months before Francesco signed a contract with Milan. “I missed his challenges. I showed him the contract as if saying ‘You see? I arrived,” he confessed in that interview with the British media.
That passage through Milan, however, marked a break. The pressure, the sadness for the death of his father and the lack of motivation plunged him into a dissolute life.
“At that stage I was late for leaving, almost without sleep, and still trained drunk. I had no respect for myself or for my work,” he said some time in an interview with The Atlantic.
Milan tried to isolate him from the nightlife, leading him to live away from the center … it did not work. “I didn’t know what to do. And I drank,” he acknowledged.
But the fall did not stop there. Upon arriving in Sassuolo in 2013, a medical check -up revealed the unexpected: testicular cancer. It was operated urgently, but in December of that same year an anti -doping test showed anomalous hormonal levels.
The cancer had returned. Between January and March 2014, it went through chemotherapy cycles. During that stage, his life oscillated between the pathological and the unusual: he underwent treatment in the morning while watching the House series, slept in the afternoon and went out to dance at night.
“Sometimes I didn’t eat or sleep,” he confessed to The Guardian. The pizza with tuna and onion was the only thing that tolerated its devastated stomach.
-But a year later, a panic attack shook it: “I thought about everything I did to my parents, in the lost opportunities, on the nights of excesses. That morning I was afraid even of my shadow,” Gazzeta dello Sport told Gazzeta.
He started psychological therapy and understood that he should change.
The relapse was its lighting moment. “Without the disease, I would have ended in series B or I would have retired. Someone up there loved me and sent me cancer,” he told Gazzeta dello Sport.
Until one day he dreamed that his father and God were the same figure that asked him to change.
He cried and, since then, he adopted another life: without alcohol, with a diet based on water, vegetables, rice and bresaola, and an iron discipline.
Between October 2015 and January 2019, with the Sassuolo shirt, he played 149 consecutive games, without injuries or suspensions, a streak only interrupted by a red card in 2019 that prevented him from breaking Javier Zanetti’s record
During that stage, he also began his social work. Every Thursday morning, you could see it dressed in white apron, working with disabled people: armed fishing floats or modeled clay.
“I feel at home here. Nobody judges, everyone hugs and appreciates. They help me see life from the right place,” he said in The Guardian. He was summoned by the Italian team, signed for Lazio in 2018 and then joined the Inter project.
His spiritual profile also grew: he is a devotee of Pope John Paul II and pray to his father daily. He has a lion tattooed, a symbol that he took from Elia, a child sick of cancer whom he accompanied until his death, and adopted the nickname of “Leone.”
The return to the elite also brought new challenges. In March 2024, in a match between Inter and Napoli, player Juan Jesús accused him of racial insult.
The Italian Football Federation excluded him from the National Team “to let things calm down,” according to a statement. Inter, on the other hand, declared that he would meet with the player to clarify the facts, and the case was referred to the Federal Prosecutor of Italian football.
Today, with 37 years and a race that many believed finished before 30, Acerbi became a symbol of resilience.
