Three years ago the'farewell to Sinisa Mihajlovic, the moving words of family members and Roberto Mancini

Three years ago, on December 16, 2022, Sinisa Mihajlovic passed away, at a clinic in Rome, at the age of 53. Long ill with leukemia, he had occupied the position of Bologna coach until September of that year: he had previously been a top footballer and coach of numerous other teams. Making the sad announcement was his family: “Wife Ariadne, with children Viktorija, Virginia, Miroslav, Dusan and Nikolas, granddaughter Violante, mother Vikyorija and brother Drazen, in grief communicate the unjust and untimely death of their exemplary husband, father, son and brother, Sinisa Mihajlovic”.

“Unique professional man extraordinaire, helpful and good to everyone – the note issued by the Mihajlovic family on such a tremendous day read further -. Courageously he fought against a horrible disease. We thank the doctors and nurses who followed him over the years with love and respect, especially Dr. Francesca Bonifazi, Dr. Antonio Curti, Professor Alessandro Rambaldi, and Dr. Luca Marchetti. Sinisa will always remain with us. I live with all the love he gave us”. Mihajlovic was born in Vukovar, at that time in Yugoslavia, on February 20, 1969.

Roberto Mancini, who was the technical commissioner of the national team three years ago, had remembered him in very touching words. “I don’t have a brother anymore – he had remarked in an open letter published by Gazzetta dello Sport -Although this blood bond is sometimes abused now, in talking about friendships, I don’t feel I am exaggerating in calling it that: for me Sinisa really was, because it was life that made us such. First soccer, and then life. This is a day I never wanted to live. I just think about how unfair it is that such an atrocious disease took away a 53-year-old boy, a good man, a decent person”.

Aldo Seghedoni

, at 26.

“It’s hard to find other words when so little time has passed since the moment I said to myself, ‘Roberto, this time you really won’t be able to see him again,’ – he had added -Yesterday he was already gone: the last time he spoke to me not only with those eyes that could say more than words, eyes that sometimes forced you to lower your own, was Tuesday morning. I will carry that talk with me forever: things of ours as we have said so much to each other in almost thirty years. It’s been twenty-eight, to be exact. Teammates and bench mates, always locker room mates because even, perhaps especially, in there we got to know each other to the point of liking each other, understanding each other, quarreling, however, becoming sidekicks for each other when it became necessary for one or the other”.

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“Twenty-eight years of soccer and life: I saw grow into the soccer player and leader that anyone who knows soccer would want on their team. I saw how extraordinary punishments can become perfect, ‘impossible,’ because really I never saw anyone kick them like he did, for me he was without a doubt the best in the world. I saw the birth of the coach he would become and also his children, the joy in becoming a father and the pride, even the fear, of watching them grow up, because certain paths of ours became more and more intertwined. Almost as if it was inevitable at some point” Mancini had concluded.