The father of Chivu's star at Inter is a fruit seller and has a special relationship with his son: “We have the law!”

With rare modesty, every morning at 5:00 a.m., when very few have had their first coffee, he rides off on a bicycle to get fresh produce, then pulls up the store's shutters and sells to an entire neighborhood. Disguised, sometimes his son also helps him, it's just a family business.

“What Fede tells me in the dressing room, stays with me,” Gianni Dimarco tells us, right from the greeting, warning us that we won't learn much even if we buy all the oranges he brought from Sicily today.

He did not leave his ego on the scale, as Cristi Chivu said, a day ago, that he abandoned it forever in the place where he was seriously injured. He is only modest and discreet, rarities for a father of Italian champion footballer, valued at 50 million euros.

In the Dimarco family, family is sacrosanct and football is forbidden

At 57, Gianni Dimarco does everything with youthful energy, although it's not exactly a salesman's destiny to cheat time. It barely accepts two or three images. He shuns cameras, speaks briefly, not because he doesn't have something to say, but because he understood a long time ago that not all stories become truer when told out loud. In his boutique, opened in 1968, inherited from his parents, it is only about what nature gives.

What happens between father and son, between everyday life and that of the base at Appiano Gentile, remains at the door. Matches are not analyzed, not the second tribune between the walls and not the trattoria. Place of pilgrimage for interists not so much.

The man refuses to turn the family into a show, so the relationship with the one nicknamed “Dimash” is quite special.

With us, family peace is the law and here we don't talk about football, because we don't like to mix things up, there is a pact between me and Federico. It's not a sports bar, it's a business, a tradition we care a lot about. That's why I don't like to see the cameras, I don't like the attention. There are many fans passing by.
– Gianni Dimarco, Federico's father

It's a way in which Porta Romana doesn't loudly claim the balding blond from the flank, doesn't put a crown on him, doesn't sell him to tourists as an attraction. It keeps it the way it always was.

• Federico Dimarco made his debut for Inter's first team at the age of 17 on 11 December 2014. Roberto Mancini brought him on for Danilo D'Ambrosio away to Qarabag in a Europa League group stage match.

“I remain the supporter, he is the boy who fulfilled his dream”

Perhaps this is where the way Dimarco plays comes from, with that combination of nerve and gratitude, of explosion and discipline, of fine technique and warm blood, like a player who enters the field to cross, in every sprint, the distance between the child led by the hand to Inter's matches and the footballer who today sees the stadium rising for him, after slightly raising his palms to the elbows on the side.

This is what I want to do and will continue to do, I'm not going to change just because my son got where he wanted. At three years old, I took him to Inter's matches. Likewise when it comes to Inter, I remain the supporter, he is the boy who fulfilled his dream.

– Father of Federico Dimarco

Basically, the whole story is about the almost forgotten way not to confuse the roles, in an era in which personal success immediately becomes the setting for everyone around, in which the family becomes part of the scenography, of interviews, of posts, of fast consumption.

At Porta Romana, everything remains as before. The supporter remains a supporter, the football player remains a football player, and shop shop shop shop, as if someone drew a white line down the middle of life:

“I took over the business from my father and I'm not going to stop doing what I love. As long as the cold doesn't knock me down, as long as I can get up in the morning to get the goods, I'll keep going”.

• Federico Dimarco has been on loan at Ascoli (2016), Empoli (2016-17), Sion (2017-18), Parma (2018-19), in whose shirt he scored a goal from 30 meters even against the Nerazzurri, and Verona (2020-21)

Federico comes in a Lamborghini, pulls his hood over his head and drives a crate

On the terrace of a bar, opposite the shop, no one is in a hurry. Two elderly men, with their gaze anchored in routine and memory, follow the street, and when it comes to the Dimarco family, they don't look for big words, because they wouldn't even make sense.

“He pedals at 5 in the morning, it's his routine, we've known each other for a very long time. He goes to see what fresh goods he can order, then brings it in the van. His brother, the one in the black shirt, Giuseppe, helps him.

We've known Federico since he was a child, I took him to football at Calvairate for the first time, a club affiliated to Inter”, says Massimo, one of them, with a naturalness as if he were describing the weather. From yesterday.

A thought later, the present rushes over the past with an image taken from another layer of the world:

But sometimes Federico also comes here. Know that it helps, crate carrier. He has a gorgeous gray Lamborghini, he always tries to park it in the back because he doesn't like it either. He puts on his hood and helps Gianni.

– Massimo, next door neighbor

233of matches Federico Dimarco ticked off in Inter's shirt. He currently ranks 52nd in the all-time list of players with the most games for the Nerazzurri.

Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, his bigger park

A few steps away, in a small, almost hidden park, the field on which he hit the ball for the first time is today a friendly synthetic on which interist children run, with expensive t-shirts, without bruised knees, but with dreams untouched by worries. I still don't know if they'll ever get over the stubbornness of not letting yourself be swallowed up by your own success.

Nearby, a mural of a father and a child seems to say, in its silence, exactly what the people here do not want to explain too much. The son in the picture bears a striking resemblance to “Roberto Carlos of Porta Romana”.

All around are poplars and ornamental plums with red leaves, a shade not too distant chromatically from the seasonal strawberries, marketed by the man who planted a model chicken, not a market share.

Once a drug-trafficking area, Giardino Roberto Bazlen e Luciano Foa is now particularly lively, although there is nothing monumental about it. Maybe that's why it's so grandiose, because beginnings never have the architecture of maturity.

Not if Federico Dimarco is running between the two, with or without a hood.

For those who always believed in us. For those who worked for a dream. For those who were there during the hard times. For those who have risen again. For those who gave us up. 21 is the number of our pride.

– Federico Dimarco, Inter defender