It's impossible to think of one without referring to the other and vice versa: Giampiero Boniperti and Juventus are practically synonymous. And it is because of him a unique story took place; he became a manager first and then a President. "Juve is not only the team of my heart. It is my heart,” he once said.
A YOUNG MANAGER
It was said of him, that as a player, he behaved like a manager who knew how to do everything, and who was in love with football in every aspect. And as a manager - a position he assumed as soon as he hung up his boots - he never stopped thinking like a footballer, therefore, making him more able to understand the inner workings of the pitch. "Football is the possibility of overturning a prediction": it is not one of Boniperti's best-known phrases, but it is certainly what he learned in the 1960s when he began to have responsibilities, in a period where Juventus were winning regularly. As President, a position he undertook in 1971, he managed to bring the club to a continuity of successes that had never been seen before.
GIAMPIERIO, UMBERTO AND GIOVANNI
Giampiero Boniperti was the man who embodied the Agnelli family's culture of renewal and did so for a very long time. In a shareholders meeting in 1956, Umberto said that the Club relied on him "for a real and effective attachment to the social colours and not only for professional reasons". And when Boniperti took charge later on, he was described as: "the ideal President, now he has more determination than when he played".
"I would not set a time limit to the presidency of Giampiero Boniperti": this was a sentence declared by Giovanni Agnelli in 1976, when the cycle inaugurated by the new Juve commenced. It went as brilliantly as l'Avvocato would have hoped, and under the "Bonipertian" management, Juventus became the first team in Europe to win all international competitions.
THE BONIPERTIAN PHILOSOPHY
Giampiero Boniperti's philosophy was based on two pillars...
Roberto Bettega was the Turin soul of Juve and an academy product. Boniperti had the admirable courage to focus on the youth, investing each year in young talent. Michel Platini was the international champion who was ahead of his competition, who brought the delicious taste of iconic football, and the strength of a club that improves with the champions and, at the same time, completes them.
A LIFE WITH TRAP
The greater the challenges, the more you need to be able to face them with courage. After three championships in four years, Juventus saw their Granata cousins prevail in the league in 1976. Boniperti felt that there was a need for a radical shift and he focused on a very young tactician: Giovanni Trapattoni. Never will a choice prove to be more apt. Trap would become the coach who would remain on the bench the longest, 10 years of triumphs across all competitions until 1986 and a second stint from 1991 to 1994.
ITALY, EUROPE, THE WORLD
Giampiero Boniperti has the historical merit of broadening Juventus' horizon. After having conquered the hegemony in Italy, widening the gap of the league titles won over Inter and Milan, his Juve went on to conquer all the European cups. It was an unstoppable crescendo, from the UEFA Cup in 1977 to the Intercontinental Cup in Tokyo in 1985. In this period of time, there was only one season - 1979-80 - where the Lady's trophy cabinet did not grow.
WINNING IS NOT IMPORTANT...
Boniperti's most famous phrase, the sum of his "Juventinità" is well known: "Winning is not important, it is the only thing that matters". This was a challenge first of all to oneself, to continuously improve, to go beyond one's limits and to make sure that a success is never a point of arrival, but the starting point. In order to succeed in all of this, the President had a truly extraordinary ability to evaluate people. With him, Juventus became a club full of reference figures for years and years, such as Dino Zoff and Gaetano Scirea, who were capable of transmitting the club's culture and values. One of them, Antonio Cabrini, summed him up well: "Boniperti was a charismatic and decisive character who lived for Juventus, 24/7."
THE FIRST TIME
A ritual, a superstition, a way of experiencing the matches as a fan. Most of the time, Boniperti left the grandstand after 45 minutes, went to talk to the team in the locker room and then preferred to isolate himself: "I left after the first half in order suffer less, I locked myself in the office, played solitaire and waited for them to come and tell me how it went. I preferred not to talk to the journalists immediately after the game." In this too, the President was absolutely unique.
COMMITMENT TO SPORT
In his experience as a European parliamentarian, Giampiero Boniperti was proud that the word sport "which did not appear in the Italian Constitution" had been included in the Maastricht Treaty. In addition to Juventus, his work had also been oriented towards the promotion of sports activities through the management of Sisport, a company of the Fiat Group, since the end of the 1970s. It was an important period, with world-class protagonists such as Sara Simeoni and Pietro Mennea, who were athletic champions.
THE PRESIDENT
His latest gift from behind the desk was the purchase of Alessandro Del Piero. We saw them together on September 8, 2011, at the inauguration of the Stadium. "Tell a child about Boniperti and you will have coloured his heart with black and white for his entire life," wrote Claudio Marchisio.
On that magical evening, Giampiero Boniperti did exactly that: sitting on that bench, the Presidentissimo, seemed to us, to be one of the founders, one of those guys from the Liceo Massimo D'Azeglio, who created a dream called Juventus.