The footballer who defeated cancer and alcoholism before becoming a success

BarcelonaBarça's executioner in the Champions League semi-finals, Francesco Acerbi, is no ordinary guy. "Me? I've lived a thousand lives," the veteran 37-year-old Inter defender once said. The scorer of the equalizer in the final minute of the match—which forced extra time—is one of those annoying players who tends to cross certain lines when he plays. In the quarter-finals, instead of celebrating qualification, he laughed in Thomas Müller's face in an unsportsmanlike gesture. Against Barça, he spent the semi-finals trying to unnerve Lamine Yamal with dirty tactics. Opponents can't even stand him, and Inter fans adore him. Criticism doesn't bother him at all, as he's been through hell, as he likes to say.

Acerbi wants to win the Champions League, the major title he's missing, by any means necessary. And so he managed to reach Saturday's final against PSG, playing a key part in a team whose sporting directors had wanted him out a few months ago because they believed he was already too old. The Lombard defender proved them wrong by playing at a high enough level alongside Bastoni. When he plays, he tries to make up for lost time, as for much of his career, Acerbi made a lot of mistakes. And he tells it himself. "I was quite an idiot; instead of loving football, I hurt myself by going out too much at night. I had a problem," he recalls. This problem has a name: alcoholism.

Acerbi's career is astonishing. Until he was 22, he played in lower divisions. Formed in Brescia, he played for teams like Pavia and Renate, until he received an offer to play in the Second Division with Reggina, the club from Reggio Calabria. He was 22. He had a good year that allowed him to jump to the First Division with the modest Chievo Verona, a club with hardly any fans that signed cheaply and came at a high price. Acerbi established himself as a defender who could play center back or full back, very physical and aggressive, sometimes violent. Playing well gave him energy and time, and later, in 2012, he signed for Milan. He was 24 years old and in two seasons he had gone from the fourth tier of Italian football to playing in the Champions League.

It seemed like everything could be going well, since Acerbi had been a Milan fan as a child. But those months later, his father, who had always supported him, died of an illness. He didn't react well to the loss. Nor did he lose sight of the fame of being at Milan. He got lost in the Milanese nightlife and, as he admitted, "I often arrived at training still drunk." "I hadn't slept. But because I was strong and young, my body held up," he said. However, his performance wasn't good enough to play for Milan, so he ended up at Sassuolo, where a pre-medical examination detected a tumor in his left testicle. Since it was benign, he underwent surgery and was training again within three weeks. "It didn't affect me at all. I didn't pay attention to it and I still went out too much at night. I had a drinking problem," he recalled in the magazine. The Last ManBut a few months later, a tumor was found in his right testicle after he tested positive for doping at the end of a Cagliari-Sassuolo match. The tests showed many abnormalities, and when a scan was performed, it wasn't doping: it was malignant cancer.

"Cancer was my luck"

Now chemotherapy was really necessary. "I was so unfocused that I didn't react at first. I kept going out at night while I was undergoing treatment. I couldn't quit drinking; all I thought about was going out," he says. "My luck, if I hadn't had it, wouldn't have changed," he defends. "A year after my illness, I woke up with a panic attack. I started thinking about all the worries I'd caused my parents, the opportunities I'd wasted, the nights I spent fearing my fear," said Acerbi, who changed a lot during the long treatment to overcome the illness. He would get tattoos, whether it was a quote by Paulo Coelho, a popular saying, a quote by Albert Einstein, or a giant lion. His level would be so high that he made it onto the Italian national team, with which he would win the European Championship. And finally, the call came from Inter, the club he didn't like as a kid, since he used to play for Milan. As a veteran, it's necessary to value every moment in life.