Football, for years, has guiltily forgotten Salvatore Garritano. He – Italian champion in a Toro team that never won any more championships – was talked about again in 2008, when Cesare Prandelli, his former teammate, dedicated the Golden Bench to him. He did it because Garritano from Cosenza was going through a very delicate period.
His Cosenza, in the golden years, dreamed of making the jump to Serie A with him, in the wake of another great “wolf” who recently passed away, Franco Rizzo.
From apprentice to champion
When the Bruzio footballer appeared on the balcony of great football, at least on paper, he didn’t seem predestined. Garritano came from a peripheral area of the city of Bruzi, via Popilia, and it was precisely there that he began to cut his teeth: he was the boy at Bar Carbone, in the heart of Cosenza, and for a living he delivered coffee, dribbling past some motorist here and there (very few, at the time, to be honest).
On the pitch he stood out, at the time of Morrone, Cosenza’s second team. Umberto Carbone, the owner of the bar, allowed him to go to training and the first photo taken posing as a Serie A player, complete with dedication, he sent to his former employer.
The first team to notice his talent was Ternana, but the approach did not prove easy: the initial phase of his Umbrian experience was spent almost as a deputy warehouseman, cleaning changing rooms and polishing his teammates’ boots. The apprenticeship of the time was like this. But soon, in Terni, they realized that the striker from Cosenza knew what he was doing, and he began his climb towards the football that counts.
Torino took it, and the Tricolore arrived. A sort of twelfth man, closed by the pair of pairs in Italian football: Pulici-Graziani. But this was enough to sew the shield onto his chest and imprint his name in the most beautiful pages of Granata history.
Subsequently he toured the Italy of football: from Bergamo, with Atalanta, to Bologna, passing through Genoa (Samp side) and Pistoiese, until concluding a dignified career at Alcamo, a team that also welcomed him as coach (the only experience in his career).
Then, traces of Garritano – who lived through very complicated moments – were almost lost. But any citizen of Cosenza who lived in the Cosenza of the 70s will never forget that boy with the mustache who distributed coffee to his fellow citizens dreaming of the best football.