Gazzetta dello Sport: “Retegui, Italy has a new number 9. Serie A is in pole position to buy it”

Today’s edition of “La Gazzetta dello Sport” focuses on Italy’s Rettigui and Mancini.

Center forward of both worlds. The nine that can solve Roberto Mancini’s problems grappling with the attackers’ career crisis, as if they were priests. Matteo Retigui is the one that history may be bringing back to Italy since the great-grandfather Angelo, of Canicato, set off more than a century ago from the port of Sicily to reach the promised land, Argentina. Married to Maria Carlos Retegui’s granddaughter, a marriage through thick and skinny hockey, the family sport. Father Carlos, “El Chappa” (sheet metal in Italian), was a gold medal coach with Argentina at the Rio Games in 2016. Mother Maria graduated from World Junior Champion in 1993. Michaela, her sister, won silver in Tokyo in 2021. Why not Matteo goes the same way?

Between soccer and hockey because Mathieu also loved soccer. His life oscillated between the two sports until fate forced a choice. He had started at the age of 10 with the ball in the River Plate youth team, a team that Carlos supported, without giving up his hockey stick. But River let him down, didn’t believe in him, and didn’t let him play. So Mateo said enough from day to day. At the age of fifteen, in 2014, he, with a hungry soul and strong muscles, devoted himself to hockey. So he also learned to be the first scorer to press, because that’s the striker’s job. There is an intensity in hockey that is unknown in football », Father Carlos reveals.

El Chapa Retegui, as they know him in hockey, remains vague when we ask him about the immediate future of his son, striker Mateo, who will turn 24 at the end of April: «Yes, I can confirm that many European clubs have been looking for him, Europe is his lucid dream. from? Everywhere is interest from Italy, Spain, Germany and even the English Premier League.
The striker, who scored 28 goals in his last 48 matches in the Argentine league in 2022 and 2023, is not bad. In England they discover Julian Alvarez, the world champion, like Lautaro, and in the first division there is also the international Giovannino Simeone. In the Bundesliga there are Alario ex River and Palacios. In La Liga, the Argentines are the most numerous colonies.

Azzurro Papa Retegui does not show his cards, says Milena: «At the moment Mateo only thinks of azzurro and Tigre. And he doesn’t have to think about anything else. He’s just excited, happy and satisfied with his Italian choice.” True. “Of course, the call-up put the spotlight on him but the scouts have already moved on for a few weeks.” If not months. Like the Milan clubs. Inter, for example, knew him well and for some time. He had contacts with his father, who also works as his agent, and with the clubs that own Mateu’s card.Because if it is true that the striker is from San Fernando on loan to Tigre of Victoria, the great Buenos Aires, for the second year in a row, then the club Rossoble has already announced that he will soon buy half Retegui price, paying 2.1 million euros ($ 2.3) according to the previous agreement with Boca Juniors, the current owner of the new blue striker.