Strong, too strong. So strong that one day that player with the number 10 on his shoulders and the technical qualities of Serie A caught the ball in his own half of the pitch and after having skipped the entire Monopoli – and traveled sixty meters with the ball at his feet – he put it into an empty net. He looked like Maradona, he was Peppe Catalano: what was a player like that doing in C1? «I had fun in a very strong Messina, above all I won with a group that wasn’t just Catalan». Of course: Bellopede as a defensive director supported by the “hound” Romolo Rossi, Napoli as a full-back-scorer (and the year before there was also Carmelo Mancuso, who later moved from Milan), His Majesty Franco Caccia to teach football with his famous Brazilian technique and Totò Schillaci to put it in with an innate instinct for goal. It was Messina 85/86, the team that forty years ago brought the biancoscudata back to Serie B under the confident guidance of Franco Scoglio, the great architect of that golden era.
Peppe Catalano will be one of the “bastards” who will give life to a “reunion” in the city over the weekend strongly desired by the senators of that team: «There will remain unrepeatable years of joys and victories in a fantastic environment – says the former Giallorossi playmaker – and seeing each other again will be exciting. It already happened recently in Lipari, but in Messina it will be different.”
Four years in white shield, goals and exploits: Peppe Catalano was the classic “10” to go crazy. One of those who immediately made you fall in love with this wonderful sport at the first touch of the ball. Someone who knew how to do everything on the pitch: throw his teammate into the net, finish, lead the team, and also be infallible from the spot. In short, a football genius who lived his best years in Messina: «I remember everything, from the beginning with the Professor with whom I had a privileged relationship, born at the time of Akragas, to the last year, when the cycle ended and unfortunately I didn’t follow Scoglio to Genoa but went to Udine: in the middle everything that a footballer dreams of experiencing with the push of a city that loved us and that always made twelve of us play…».
Forty goals between C1 and B, including the penalty-promotion at the “Celeste” against Cosenza: «My goal at Monopoli has gone down in history, but there is another one that I am very fond of. In B, against Taranto: almost at the end we had conceded a draw from Biondo; I remember that in the 90th minute I exchanged the ball with Gobbo and with my left foot, which wasn’t my favorite foot, I kicked inside-neck at the far post to make it 2-1. The roar of the “Celeste” still rings in my ears, many friends from Messina have told me they have never heard anything like it.”
