“I listen to your messages. I sowed and defeated throat cancer»- Corriere.it

“The weather? I don’t want to waste it. I try to take everything from life, without sparing myself, I give the right value to things. I understood it from my experience: days, weeks, months shouldn’t be thrown away». It could easily be an excerpt from an old interview with Luca Vialli. Instead, they are the words of the
Minister for Sport and Youth Andrea Abodi
entrusted to an interview with Sheet. In Vialli, Abodi was linked by a friendship, but also by a common enemy: “the unwanted guest”as the champion who disappeared a week ago called him and as the minister calls him today.

It was January 2021 when Abodi, touching his neck, felt the presence of two lymph nodes that caused him pain. Those were the days when he was evaluating the candidacy for mayor of Rome that Giorgia Meloni had proposed to him. The biopsy, however, cleared the field of any doubts. Chemo and radiotherapy weren’t enough to eliminate the tumor cells on the tonsil wall and the minister was forced to undergo surgery: «It was August 3, 2021 – he still tells the Sheet – and in the meantime I had explained to Giorgia that I could not run for the Capitol». Now, a year and a half later, «I think I have lost the unwanted guest. Of course, when they remove the lymph node chain you are asymmetrical, it seems that you are missing something ».

It was the disease that further cemented the relationship with Vialli, even if Abodi explains that in their conversations, he “never complained about his pathology. He explained to me that his case was complicated. Di Luca struck me that he never wanted to seek sympathy». What emerges is a relationship of mutual empathy: «Sometimes I listen to Gianluca’s voice messages again. His death saddened me and made me think». In the last message he wishes him good luck, “not only for the appointment as Minister of Sport, but also for the rest”. They had a commitment: «As president of the sports credit I had organized the presentation of his book, which however we never managed to finalize. There was no time.”

Now Abodi the unwanted guest managed to kick him out, but these are experiences that nonetheless leave a very deep mark: «At first I experienced the discovery of the disease with unconsciousness. Then the second thought I had was another: it’s too easy to appreciate only the good things in life. And there’s another theme, too: it’s about who’s around you. Your loved ones have it much worse. In the most complicated moment, that of the treatments and the operation, the Policlinico Umberto I was my office. I wrote and read from there. I became friends with all the patients. We still talk. One of them didn’t make it.”