Francesco Totti was Roma’s greatest son

After 25 years, 785 appearances, and 307 goals, Francesco Totti has retired from football. He leaves Roma as its greatest player, but more than that, he has become one of the Eternal City’s best myths: “You are — and will always be — my life,” he told the fans after his final game. “I will no longer entertain you with my feet, but my heart will always be there with you.”

The night that Francesco Totti was born, Umberto Lenzini had a nightmare. The god of sleep, Morpheus, came to the man in the form of a young boy covered in gold.

Lenzini, in the land of enchantment, watched this boy walk towards the Stadio Olimpico. The boy clutched a dead eagle with his left hand and sucked on the thumb of his right. A she-wolf walked beside him. When he reached the stadium, the gates opened wide to receive the child but when Lenzini moved to enter, the doors shut in his face and the she-wolf turned around to him in anger. She would not allow him into the stadium.

Lenzini awoke in a panic and mumbling the name, “Totti.”

Two years before that night, Lazio had won its first league title. The glory should have come to them the season before, but on the last day of that campaign, their fate was depended upon Roma beating or drawing against Juventus. Lenzini believed that Roma purposely lost that game. Lenzini knew that this was no ordinary nightmare, it was a warning from the gods.

When Lenzini took over as President in the late 1960s, Lazio were in a financial crisis and struggling in the second division. He led them back into the top division soon after. And not long after that, they swept their rivals, Juventus, Milan, and Roma, before being crowned champions in that 1973-1974 season. Roma finished in eighth. Lenzini and his men celebrated the achievement for a week. The Olimpico, as well as the city of Rome, was draped in the colors of white and blue. Food and drink were bountiful and every man, woman, and child ate and drank to their heart’s delight. At the end of the feast, Lenzini, standing on a pedestal in the middle of the Centro Storico, surrounded by thousands of citizens, a combination of those loyal to him, his enemies, and curious individuals, in the view of heavens, declared that Rome belonged to Le Aquile.

After his panic had settled down, Lenzini summoned a few of his men to him. There in the dark of his bedroom, he tasked them with scouring the city to find the Tottis. They were to bring him the newborn child by any circumstance.

The men set about the hospitals in the city like a plague. They destroyed everything they came in contact with. In their search, Lenzini’s men harassed doctors and nurses, those who did and did not provide them with any valuable information. The longer their search, the more destructive they grew. Finally, they arrived at the San Giovanni Addolorata Hospital. Under the threat of death, a secretary revealed to that Lorenzo and Fiorella Totti were in one of the rooms and they had just given birth to a boy. When the men burst through the doors ready to follow their dreadful orders, they were surprised to find man and wife weeping together over their child. The universe had done its worst, and the baby had passed away shortly after its birth. There was no need to do anything more. The men returned to Lenzini with the news, and he was relieved.

Unknown to them though, Apollo had sent one of his nurses to warn the new parents of the threat before the men had arrived. The nurse pleaded with the Tottis to trust in the wisdom of the god of light and to put the child under his protection. She promised that the boy would return to them one day and he would live to become one of the greatest Romans to ever live. He would bring honor to the city and his family. The Tottis reluctantly obeyed and gave their child to the messenger. The lifeless body that Lenzini’s men had seen and inspected was a trick of Apollo’s.

The nurse fled from the hospital and out the Porta Metronia. She took the baby to the river Tiber. There she knelt down and placed the boy in a sealed box with small openings at the top, so that he could breathe. She prayed for his safety and then she exposed him to the water. Miraculously, the box did not flow with the current, but instead began to move upstream, towards Mount Fumaiolo and Le Vene del Tevere. When the box reached the village of Balze di Verghereto, a she-wolf picked it from the water and carried the baby to the door of a sterile peasant woman. The woman, seeing the crying baby, fell to her knees and thanked the gods for their favor.

On the day that Giuseppe Giannini was to make his debut for Roma in 1982, Fiorella Totti was with her husband when she saw a young boy walking to the Olimpico alone. The boy moved through the crowd as if in a trance, drawn to the stadium by a greater power. She followed him cautiously to the entrance, where he walked past the guards, who seemed to make no notice of him. Then he was engulfed in the match-day crowd. From that day on, she would always see this same boy before every home game, wavering and sucking his thumb.

One day she decided to stop him. She knelt down to his height, put her hands on his shoulder and asked for his name and where he came from.

The child, with his eyes glazed over, said that his name was Francesco, and that he had come from a village close to the city. She asked him who his parents were, and the boy told her the story that had been told to him by his adopted mother. That he had been given to the peasant woman as a gift from the heavens, and she had raised him as if he was her own child. He did not know his real parents but he had been told that he was a child of Rome.

Fiorella knew this was her son, and she embraced him, promising to never let him leave her sight again.

The young Francesco loved nothing more than football, and the club of his heart was Roma, as it was for his father and grandfather. When he wasn’t watching the club on television or in the stadium to see Giannini, he showed his talents on the streets. He spent his days dribbling down the Via Vetulonia, bamboozling bigger children and amusing his elders. It didn’t take longer before scouts began to whisper about him.

Eventually the word reached Lenzini, who thought that he could quell the threat by signing Francesco to Lazio. When his representatives arrived at the Totti household, they were immediately rebuffed by Fiorella. She had no time for them. They had not even started to make their proposal before she slammed the door on their faces.

Next came Juventus, and still she said no. Then Milan arrived promising enough money to change the fortunes of the future generations of Tottis. Yet, Fiorella stood firm in her position. Her son would only play for Roma.

“It was my mother who drove me to practice. Outside the grounds, she’d wait for me. She’d wait two, three, sometimes four hours while I trained. She’d wait in the rain, in the cold, it didn’t matter. She waited so I could have my dream.”

When Fiorella heard that Lodigiani, Francesco’s youth club, had promised the boy to Lazio against her wishes, she marched into the office of Gildo Giannini — Giuseppe’s father and the youth coach of Roma — and demanded that he take Francesco. Gildo had no choice but to obey.

Before long, Francesco made his way through the various age groups, and on March of 1993, the beautiful blond 16-year-old was given his debut against Brescia with five minutes left in the match. A few yards away from him, on the same pitch, stood Giuseppe Giannini, his idol and Rome’s crown prince.

Four years later, Totti inherited Giannini’s No. 10. He would wear it for the next 21 years. Totti was made captain of the club a year after being given the shirt. For the next two decades, he conquered Italy and the world. The boy in gold who looked up to the Prince of Rome became one of the city’s greatest rulers.

Totti scored his first goal on the first day of the following season after his debut. Two goals against Cesena in 2012 took him to 211 at the time, the most any player had ever scored for a single club in Italy. On March 18, 2013, he scored against Parma to break Gunnar Nordahl’s 225-goal record for most goals scored in Serie A. He is Roma’s all-time leading scorer, and appearance holder, in Serie A and Europe.

In his first senior international tournament, Totti was named the Man of the Match for the Euro 2000 Final, making the team of the tournament in the process. In a penalty shootout against Holland, Totti told his teammates that he would chip Edwin van der Sar from the penalty spot. Then he did so.

The year after, he won the league with Roma. At the end of that season, he was awarded the Serie A Footballer and Italian Footballer of the Year — he would win the Italian Footballer of the Year four more times. In 2006, he led Italy to a World Cup triumph. Playing with metal plates in his ankles, he finished the tournament as the assists leader and a member of the All-Star team. The next season, he was both the top scorer and assist leader in Serie A. He also scored his favorite goal: A left-footed volley from a tight angle on the left side of the box against Sampdoria.

Totti is also, unsurprisingly, the leading scorer in the Roman Derby. He has punished Lenzini’s men since the beginning. For 25 years, he has been a symbol of Roma’s superiority.

When Roma beat Lazio 3-1 in the ’98-99 season, it was Totti who denied the Eagles their comeback after Christian Vieri’s goal. Totti had pounced on a loose ball in the dying minutes to put the game beyond doubt. Then he celebrated by taking off his shirt and revealing a message underneath to the Lazio fans: “Vi ho purgato ancora.” I have purged you again. The defeat cost Lazio the title, as they finished the season just one point below Milan.

Yet, every legend must come to an end. Unfortunately, Totti has a human body and it ages like any other.

Over 26 years, Totti has seen players who were supposed to take his place come and go. He has played for Gildo Giannini, admired his son, played alongside the Prince, and surpassed him. He has been a left winger, striker, second striker, false 9, and a trequartista. He led Roma to her only title, he’s won the World Cup with Italy and in between, he was kicked out of Euro 2004 for spitting on an opponent. He has fought with almost every manager that he’s played under: Vincenzo Montella, Fabio Capello, Luis Enrique, Claudio Ranieri, and especially Luciano Spaletti. Totti has been hero and villain many times over.

He had even threatened to leave Roma on a free transfer before and came very close to moving to Real Madrid 13 years ago.

Yet he never did. Totti has been a Roman for 40 years and has played for Roma for 25 years of that. The Olimpico has been his throne. He has brought glory to the club of his heart and has been her most faithful son. The players, managers, and world changed round him, but Totti remained and fought for his club.

“People ask me, why spend your whole life in Rome? Rome is my family, my friends, the people that I love. Rome is the sea, the mountains, the monuments. Rome, of course, is the Romans. Rome is the yellow and red. Rome, to me, is the world. This club, this city, has been my life.”

Last year, Totti complained to Spaletti about his lack of playing time. The manager subsequently dropped him out of the team for Roma’s 5-0 win against Palermo. Former manager Zdenek Zeman and former teammate John Arne Riise came to the captain’s defense afterwards. Zeman didn’t believe that the golden boy was finished. He said that Totti isn’t just any player, that he IS Roma. That Il Re di Roma had given everything to the club.

Riise went a step beyond and said: “With all due respect to the other players, Francesco Totti is like a god.”