Among the friends I remember, Andrea Solbiati (1928 – 2014) holds a special place. He too is a descendant of an oldtextile company that has been producing fine linen in Busto Arsizio since 1874 (today it belongs to Loro Piana). “A ‘man among the beautiful’, as Riccardo Bacchelli would have written, a great tennis player and sports enthusiast, viscerally fond of football. “(…) he is a misunderstood genius: already in the early 1970s he understood that whoever owns a football team can aspire to a political role. He is one of the few friends of dad’s who hangs around our house. He tells him that he must buy Milan and then, at the stadium, the fans would chant chants for ‘Caprotti for president’. With Bernardo, however, he knocks on the wrong door: he likes neither football nor active politics’. (p. 90).
To say that, ironically, the Milan headquarters was located, from 1940 to 1949, at Via del Lauro 4, where we lived, from the 1960s onwards, thanks to the efforts of grandfather Peppino and his friend Nando Angeloni.
Andrea was deeply milanista. He brought my absolute football idol as a child, Gianni Rivera, home for dinner, who came to us with father Eligio.
He was the first promoter of the ‘Clubino‘ football team (a club that since 1901 has welcomed the most industrious bourgeoisie and enlightened aristocracy of Milan and the surrounding area), founded in the late 1980s with Federico Castelbarco. I played in that team for more than 10 years (which, in my horrendous vicissitudes, gave me much comfort).
Football is a bit of life, everyone’s outlet (except Dad’s). I have many idols, and I’ve met many of them: Nils Liedholm, whose wineEsselunga stocked in Monferrato, near my father’s house. Fabio Cudicini, the ‘Black Spider’, whose son Stefano was my classmate when I went to school at the Leone XIII Institute. Thanks to Fabio and Stefano I also met others, such as Karl-Heinz Schnellinger and even the rough Enzo Bearzot, the coach of the national team that won the legendary 1982 World Cup.
Fabio Cudicini, for many years, sent me greetings because he too was a supplier to Esselunga (carpets).
Going back to Andrea, I still keep some books on football that he gave me, which are particularly dear to me. Also, his sister Marilea married Guido Somarè after his separation from Giorgina [Venosta], my mother. A continuous circle of life that always unites and brings everyone together: the Solbiati, Somarè, Bernocchi (also a textile industrialist), Venosta and Caprotti families have been friends for at least two generations.
Bibliography:
M. SOLBIATI, Andrea Solbiati, a gentleman with an English style, in ‘Notonlymagazine’, 4 July 2016
EAD., Federico Castelbarco Albani, a gentleman of today, in Ibid., 10 October 2016
G. CAPROTTI, Le Ossa dei Caprotti. Una storia italiana, Milan, 2024
The 2016 team, standing from left: Niccolò Resta, Simone Romiti, Giuseppe Caprotti, Pietro Fiocchi, Luca Borella, Stanislao Lucheschi, Cristiano Nardi, Didi Marelli, Guli Manetti.
From the side: Francesco Sbisà, Federico Castelbarco, Andrea Romiti, Cesare Spadacini, Guido Corsetti, Pachino Bulgarini, Umbe Pirera, Luca Marazzi, Niccolò Cesaris.
Justified absentees: Giorgio Bertola, Emanuele Cito, Paolo Faina, Niccolò Fontana Rava, Francesco Niutta, Paolo Orlando, Filippo Pirera, Andreas Albeck, Bruno Scaroni, Paolo Ansaldi, Fede Silva, Gabriele Spinelli, Pietro Taccone, Pier Valtolina, Berni Rucellai, Giovanni Revoltella, Vasily Piacenza, Giangi Rocco, Marco Pragliola, Lorenzo Rocca (fureria), Daddi Pescetto (ditto), Filippo Cesaris (ditto), Tommaso Pizzi (emotional support), Gian Maria Oddi (ditto), Alessandro Lenotti, Ale Melzi, Massi Marsiaj, Tommaso Faina, Filippo Fontana – Rava, Giovanni Pomati, Manfredi Salvadego, Filippo Marchi, Ludovico Manetti, Giovanni Pomati , Giovanni Nordio and the legendary ‘Prince’, alias Fabrizio Colonna.
Thanks to Micaela Solbiati and Federico Castelbarco for the photos
