When I set out to write Papà, Van Basten e altri supereroi five years ago, I never thought about how it was going to change my life. First of all, it’s thanks to this book that one of my biggest dreams came true: entering San Siro hand in hand with my son, twenty-seven years after having been there for the first time with my father. And it’s also thanks to this book that I met a lot of wonderful people, including some of my old superheroes.

So where do I begin? It all started when I became a father, and to help put Leonardo to sleep, not knowing anything else, I improvised by humming some chants from the stadium and telling him stories about the epic feats of the champions whose posters covered my bedroom walls as a boy: Van Basten, Baresi, Maldini, Shevchenko, Kaká; in other words, my superheroes. It was my wife Claudia’s fault—who else?—that I started to write what ended up becoming real bedtime stories, in every sense of the word. It was also her fault that I convinced myself to publish this book. And since no publishing house was willing to show any faith in me back then, I decided to show faith in people, and I ended up with a crowdfunding campaign that tripled its initial fundraising goal.

Since then, to be honest, all of the overwhelming affection for this book has made it difficult to remember many of the beautiful things that have happened to me. It’s as if a bomb exploded in my hands. My inbox started to fill on a daily basis with messages from all over the world (Italy, England, Australia, USA. One day, a man even wrote to me all the way from Mongolia!), and everyone would tell me the same thing: that they recognized themselves in my book as a father, a son, a fan and a person, and that my book is not just about calcio, but about each and every one of us. It is the story of everyone who loves the game. In fact, over the years, Papà, Van Basten e altri supereroi has also become the name of a community, boasting more than 100,000 people across various social media platforms.

Three years after its first publication, one can say that Papà, Van Basten e altri supereroi is no longer just a book, and it is especially not just my book, because it belongs to everyone who has read it, to everyone who believed in it from the beginning, to the kids who dream about becoming a superhero, to all the fathers who wish to pass their allegiances on to their children, to those who love Milan, and lastly, even to those who have different tastes. That’s why I’m happy that today, even Inter and Juve fans can read fairy tales about their own superheroes, thanks to Papà, Zanetti e altri supereroi and Papà, Del Piero e altri supereroi. Five years ago I wrote my story, but it could be any of ours.