And that Munari who paid the Northern Europeans
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have stifled the farewells to two sporting greats who passed away between February 28 and March 1, 2026: Rino Marchesi (Inter, Napoli, Juventus) and Sandro Munari (Lancia Rally). Football loses a distinguished Milanese gentleman, a coach… who excelled in managing champions of the caliber of the Argentine and the Frenchman. Motorsport bids farewell to the hero of the snowy nights on the Col de Turini at the Monte Carlo Rally.
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At precisely the hour when the grimmest news of the ongoing wars forced our gaze to wander from Ukraine to Iran and the wider Middle East, an equally bitter fate took Rino Marchesi and Sandro Munari: the former, a former footballer and coach who had swung by Diego Armando Maradona and Michel Platini; the latter, a rally driver, a true tightrope walker behind the wheel of a Lancia Martini.
Marchesi, a gentleman. A talented midfielder and then a pragmatic leader for top-flight teams like Inter, Napoli, and Juventus.
We met him in California in the mid-1980s. During a break in the Serie A season, Marchesi landed in Los Angeles with the "troop" led by Diego Armando Maradona, who was a regular in those parts because sponsor Puma constantly invited him... from his King boots to performances in prestigious friendlies and appearances aimed more at marketing and the hunger for emancipation of the millions and millions of South Americans (especially Mexicans and Argentines) who had immigrated to the Golden State.
And so from the steps leading down to the greenery, so imposing it was compared to Versailles, leaving behind the University's emblem, wandering a little to the right and a little to the left, you arrived at the small football stadium where Napoli held seemingly rose-water training sessions.
We write "apparently" because some of the players were pushing themselves even in training, meaning they couldn't stop running and jogging, kicking penalties and free kicks, dribbling and taming the ball. Maradona above all. At the time, he was practically halfway through his career. He was in the midst of the 1982 and 1986 World Cups. He wasn't yet the "Hand of God," but he was certainly a man with blessed feet.
And there, on the green of Wallis Annenberg Stadium on the UCLA campus, Maradona amazed everyone with the skill with which he handled the ball, as if it were part of himself. And perhaps it was.
Marchesi stood in the middle of the field for the entire duration of practice and—obviously—stood a lot and sat very little during the games. He didn't smoke his proverbial cigar there, which was more often than not a "Presidente" obtained who knows where. The press conferences during those California outings lasted just long enough not to disappoint the few sports reporters sometimes gathered by the organizers of the trip and very often by Puma's salespeople. The European journalists drew heavily from the confessions gathered under the vaults of the austere Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, made up of round-based high-rises: gigantic concrete and glass cylinders that stood Downtown, on Figueroa, between Fourth and Fifth streets, close to Highway 110 that bisects the entire City of Angels.
It was there, at the Westin, that Marchesi, between friendly matches, far from the official moments of the away game, indulged in extremely interesting technical evaluations. Sometimes he delved into the human aspects of his players. Maradona had already left behind significant experiences at Boca Juniors and Barcelona. Marchesi, a distinguished man and a sports enthusiast, was one of the priests of football, which was experiencing a golden age in Italy and, with the Italian national team, also around the world. The Azzurri had recently triumphed in Spain with Enzo Bearzot leading the squad captained by Dino Zoff, where Maradona's Argentina had arrived as defending champions. Anyone who played football at that level was considered a priest of emotion. And Marchesi, with that mole on his left cheek that made him even more distinguished than he naturally was, was the director of a choir that in the 1984-85 championship relied on exceptional singers, well-matched, friends even off the field.
Allow me to list by role all the members of that extraordinary squad.
Goalkeepers: Castellini, Di Fusco, Zazzaro.
Defenders: Boldini, Bruscolotti, Carannante, De Simone, De Vecchi, Ferrara – yes… Ciro! –, Ferrario, Marino, Napolitano.
Midfielders: Bagni, Bertoni, Caffarelli, Celestini, Dal Fiume, Favo, Maddaloni, Punzone.
Forwards: Baiano, Maradona, De Rosa, Penzo.
The only foreigners: Bertoni and Maradona, both Argentines.
Wikipedia took it upon itself to refresh our memory of Corrado Ferlaino's squad.
And looking through the list, Marchesi calmly noted: "You won't believe it, but the last one to leave the training ground is Diego. He's never satisfied with work... he says: there's time for a shower. That's where the desire to apply oneself comes out, driven by pride which, along with natural talent, technique, and sacrifice, creates that cocktail that transforms a footballer into a champion. Or rather: a champion in his own right."
Rino Marchesi passed away on March 1, 2026, at the age of 88, the feast of Saint Albino. And here I pause to discuss the coincidence with the memory of a saint who, as far as we're concerned, cannot fail to be indelible. The new war between Israel and America against Iran had just broken out. Rino's farewell went almost unnoticed. A brief page in the Gazzetta and very little else. Yet the Milanese from San Giuliano enjoyed a few Cups as a player and, as a coach, he was part of the history of great clubs like Inter, Napoli (precisely), and Juventus.
Here, Juve. There, in Turin, Marchesi, in 1986—coincidentally, the summer Maradona had led Argentina back to the top of the world—had encountered none other than the French King with Italian roots: Michel Platini.
"Well, Michel had returned to Europe with sciatica and pubalgia from the World Cup in Mexico, which Diego himself had won. He was 31 years old and would have stopped playing at a high level at the end of the season, in 1987," Marchesi emphasized whenever anyone tried to get him to draw a parallel between Diego and Michel.
Marchesi, a very measured man, didn't go too far, and once told a colleague at the Gazzetta dello Sport: "I don't like making rankings, but I can't help but say that Diego was the number 1 of the period, a step above Michel, who in turn was on par with the Van Bastens and Krols of the time." But perhaps Platini was worth the entire Dutch national team of the time...
The day before Rino's passing, the curtain also fell on the life of Sandro Munari, who was on the threshold of his 86th birthday. He will always be remembered as the "Dragon" behind the wheel of the Lancia Delta HF 1600, with which he inaugurated the 1972 Monte Carlo Rally with a poker of victories for the team managed by Cesare Fiorio, a feat he completed between 1975 and 1977 with the Lancia Stratos.
Flanked by co-driver Silvio Maiga or Mario Mannucci, the “Dragon” marked a historic turning point in the driving of rally cars in the most prestigious events and sometimes even in tests such as the Targa Florio in conjunction with Arturo Merzario from Como, also a driver in F1 with his… hair in the wind.
Munari from Cavarzere, where the sky merges with the Adriatic, ploughed by Venetian bluefish fishermen, achieved the seemingly impossible: driving in the wet as well as, and sometimes better than, those from the lands of snow and ice. With his style, imbued with courage and sometimes recklessness, "Drago Sandro" and the Lancia also attracted us twenty-year-olds to the Col de Turini on nights when the Monte Carlo Rally heated up and the cold was swept away by a passion for chassis made in Turin (and beyond) and engines made in Maranello (read: Ferrari).
Question: Considering that it's not talked about as much on television as it once was, perhaps also due to the hangover from the weeks leading up to the Paris-Dakar and its ensuing events, is the "Monte" still being raced? Yes... the 96th edition was celebrated at the end of January 2026, and the pairing of Norwegian Olivier Solberg and Briton Elliott Edmondson pushed their Yaris GR ahead of everyone else: especially ahead of the other two Toyotas of Britons Elfyn Evans and Scott Martins and the two Frenchmen Sebastien Ogier (the King of the Mountains) and Vincent Landais. Which means that in four years, the Turini will celebrate its 100th edition!
Rino and Sandro, rest in peace.
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