Acerbi reveals 'cancer saved my life' in emotional interview
'Look, I think the disease even improved me, erasing remorse and regrets. I became an observer of the landscape around me. I have eliminated the superfluous, the negative people, but also the illusions. I stopped dreaming, I prefer to set myself simple goals. I wanted the national team, for example, and I took it back. Then, of course, there is work with the psychoanalyst who has been following me since Sassuolo. He is in Modena, I am in Rome. We meet on Friday afternoons with a video chat. We spend an hour making me feel good.
'My mother taught me goodness, my father gave me tenacity and ambition. I always needed an opponent to give my best, I idealized him for a long time in the father figure. After my father died, I crashed and hit rock bottom. I was at Milan, the stimuli failed me, I didn't know how to play anymore. I started drinking and, believe me, I drank everything. It may seem like a terrible paradox, but cancer saved me. I had something to fight against again, a limit to overcome. As if I had to live a second time. And I returned as a child. Images have been resurfaced that I had completely forgotten.'