Yahoo Sport 
Roberto Mancini on Football, Style and the Secret to a Happy Life
Four decades into a glittering career, Roberto Mancini is the elegant striker turned elegant manager, a man of 100 scarves and the salt and pepper flow. A legend in Manchester whose sky blue Galacticos toppled their city rivals on that fateful May afternoon with a Martin Tyler scream and and a stocky Argentinian wheeling away in 94th minute ecstasy. Agüerooooooo!!! You know the rest.
Now heading up an Italy team with a similarly stacked team sheet, Mancini is hoping to lead the Azurri deep into the Euros and look good while doing it, having recently been announced as the ambassador of another Italian icon: Paul&Shark.
Here he discusses personal his style, a life in football and the joys of Italian sea air. Benissimo!
Style is something innate, it’s either something you have or you don’t. You can also be stylish wearing a polo and a pair of shorts. Style is not everything – not on the pitch, not outside of it – but style is beauty, and both beauty and style are personal statements; an expression of who we are. Style can only express itself in freedom.
When you are a player, style is difficult. You follow the stylist of the moment and maybe you need more time to improve your style.
I find that the classic elegance of the peacoat for me is an irreplaceable, versatile, perfect garment, the piece that everyone in my opinion should have. A garment of the seafaring tradition adapted to our everyday life.
Paul&Shark is a special brand. It has the right materials, beautiful colours, and the ability to dress men for the mountains, the sea, the city, travelling. We have the same values: respect for nature and people, elegance, beauty, the importance of fashion that’s made in Italy. Love for adventure. A few weeks ago I was in the mountains, altitude 1500 metres, with the temperature at -7C, and wearing my Paul&Shark jacket I felt like I was in my living room: warm, dry, quiet.
Football was my passion as a child, my dream. I made my Serie A debut with Bologna at the age of sixteen in 1981, and my story with football continues today, forty years later. When I started playing football everything was different, football was different and the world around it was different: what hasn't changed is the passion – the passion of those who play, those who coach, and those who follow their beloved team.
I remember very well that Aguëro moment, it was incredible for everyone after 50 years.
I love to breathe in the sea’s air, fill my lungs with its scent, and my throat with its taste. I lived for many years in Genoa, a city that’s truly unique, a seaside city but also a secret city of corners, views, suggestions. My house was near a sea cliff. Whenever the weather got stormy, big splashes of water would hit my terrace: white, very fast, incredibly powerful. My terrace was up on the fifth floor of that building. Imagine that.
We Italians are born with the good fortune of being surrounded by unique nature. The beauty of the sea represents a special kind of beauty: it surrounds you, and constantly surprises you. The more you know the sea the more you love it – and the more you learn to respect it. It’s a beauty that surrounds you with the colour blue. With silence. With freedom. The beauty of the sea is a beauty that is suddenly transformed. The stillness ends, and you’re made aware of the water, of its infinite power.
“Il Bimbo”. The boy. That’s [what] the coaches and the older players used to call me when I was a 13-year-old at Casteldebole, Bologna’s football youth academy. Three years later, I was playing in Serie A. That experience is an important part of what made me who I am.
Being out at sea, on a boat – that’s absolute freedom. You can hear yourself think. No one else is there – you, and all that blue. The air, the water. The sea, it’s also part of our heritage. Precisely for this reason we have the responsibility to respect and protect nature, this very special heritage that has been entrusted to us. Because there is no spare, no replacement nature if we eventually damage this one beyond repair.
Like this article? Sign up to our newsletter to get more articles like this delivered straight to your inbox
Need some positivity right now? Subscribe to Esquire now for a hit of style, fitness, culture and advice from the experts
You Might Also Like
