Sky Sports, comes “Michele Padovano – Innocent, 17 years without freedom”
Michele Padovano on Sky
From European and world champion with Juventus to protagonist, despite himself, of a long and painful judicial affair. Michele Padovano – Innocent, 17 years without freedomà è Sky Sport’s new Original Production airing in January on Sky and streaming on NOW. Two episodes to retrace, for the first time on Sky Sport, the life of a soccer star of the ’90s with an unprecedented and original slant, crossing competitive life, “crime” and personal drama, with the testimonies of many characters and the painful memories of the family. The first episode è scheduled for Friday, Jan. 3 at 10:15 p.m. on Sky Sports One, while the second episode will air a week later, Friday, Jan. 10, also on the same channel. Both episodes will also be available on demand.
Innocent, 17 years without freedomà è the story of Michele Padovano, a striker who grew up on the outskirts of Turin. Bomber on soccer fields of every category until winning the Coppa Campionin 1996 with Juventus, scoring one of the penalty kicks in the final. A team full of leaders and champions in which Padovano è the fourth striker along with captain GianlucaVialli,with whom he shared a special relationship from the beginning, Fabrizio Ravanelli and a young Alessandro Del Piero. A perfect life, until 2006. When the’other half’of the story is added: Michele watches the World Cup final between Italy and France, with many of his former teammates on the field, from a TV in the Bergamo prison. Arrested on charges of financing an international drug trafficking ring. Fatal, for investigators, was a 35,000-euro loan to a childhood friend, Luca Mosole, considered to be the head of the criminal syndicate, to which Michele per’does not belong in any way. That loan is only to be used to buy a horse. The life of Michele Padovano thus becomes the long sequence of a nightmare, 10 days in solitary confinement and then in jail for more than 3 months.
"The first interview I did after 15 days that I was detained. When I saw my son, I climbed over, I hugged him On Sundays in prison we had a ritual: the little game. Playing soccer in those two hours was like being free. When in the first instance I heard 8 years and 8 months I jumped, I started screaming, it è seemed unfair. Even for a one-day sentence I would not have been happy".
Seventeen years of trials, house arrest, convictions in the first two levels of justice, the choice to change lawyers, the appeal to the Supreme Court, thousands of papers until the final acquittal at the Turin Court of Appeals on Jan. 31, 2023. "I remember that lawyer Galasso, when it was to go to Cassation, told me: it will be a tough trial, but you know you will be acquitted, sì? He told me this, I looked at him, my eyes widened. When my lawyers called me and said, ‘Michele, you have been acquitted’ è it was the most beautiful moment of my life. In that moment I cried, with my wife and my son we hugged each other and from that day we started living again".
"Being ripped away from everyday life, one night suddenly, brought excruciating suffering to him, his wife Adriana and son Denis, who cannot hold back his tears even now that everything è is over, becauseé his life as a then 13-year-old boy è has been marked forever, “his dadà ” has been taken away from him and trusting others è has become bloody difficult. A story that ties in with that of Denis Bergamini, Padovano’s friend and teammate in Cosenza. Denis, like Michele’s son. Bergamini’s judicial affair, which ended on Oct. 1, 2024 with the conviction of his ex-girlfriend for conspiracy to commit voluntary manslaughter, is intertwined with Padovano’s, even in the documentary, as closely as the unbreakable bonds, which Michele was able to weave in his life, can be.
È Michele Padovano himself recounts his climbs and daring descents. And with him the voices of the many with whom he shares the penalty box, a courtroom, a jail cell. Inside Innocente, 17 years without freedom’there are the voices of the field: “A formidable striker, with an imperious sprint”, that’s how so many describe him, from Luciano Moggi, who singled him out when he scored goals with Reggiana, to the current Napoli coach and his partner in that Juve team Antonio Conte; from Ciro Ferrara, his great friend already from his Napoli days, to star Alessandro Del Piero. Soì in a Pisa-Napoli, Diego Maradona also saw him, which is why he asked President Ferlaino to take him. The eyes of all around, then, when everything worked well and money filled the pockets. Silence then, when even a message would have made him feel less lonely, and humiliation è has long been the answer to every job application. “When it ends, we will do…”. Soì his wife Adriana always repeated to him, never putting a “se” in front. She by his side, giving him strength after watching him grow up and after accompanying his football career to the ’pinnacle. Seventeen years later, Michele has regained his freedom and the possibility of regaining, at least in part, a splendid normalcy. And today è commentator in the talent team of Sky Sports.
