‘I didn’t like training, I was at parties and discos; My life was a mess’, the confession of former Colombian striker Faustino Asprilla about his stay in Italy

In his time as a footballer, Faustino Asprilla was a forceful striker, he ran over any rival that came his way and his only objective was the goal.

Asprilla was part of the golden age, of the Colombian team with which he played in the World Cups in the United States in 1994 and France in 1998 and also obtained third place in the Copa América Ecuador in 1993.

The now retired athlete, at the age of 53, acknowledges that he was not disciplined in his life as an athlete and recalled his time at Parma in Italy where he was from 1992 to 1999.

“He had no head. I didn’t like training, it was hard for me to understand what the coaches were asking me to do, I was used to playing freely and instead here you have to be faithful to your tactics, woe to you if you make a mistake, ”he said.

“And then I did not lead the life of a perfect athlete: I went to bed late, and almost never alone, I woke up very late, I liked to go to discos and parties. Anyway, in all this mess that was my life, football was not in the first place. This was my limit. But I had a lot of fun and I think I entertained a lot of people,” he added. tino in conversation with La Gazzetta dello Sport.

With respect to current football, Asprilla said he was “annoyed” by the “prominence” that coaches are looking for.

“I look at it, but I am not amused. All side passes, little dribbling. And then those coaches who look like troublemakers in front of the benches and yell at the players what to do. The protagonism of the coaches annoys me a lot, it seems that they have invented football and maybe they don’t even know how to block a ball, ”he said.

“Do you realize that nowadays, to get a shot on TV, there are assistants who show the players who have to enter the field how they have to move, what they have to do, who they have to mark? We are crazy? Do you think that players do not know what to do? Set them free, let them have fun and you will see that we will all have much more fun”, concluded the former striker. (D)