Roberto Mennella grew up in football: born in Cagliari in 1974, he wore gloves for nearly thirty years, making nearly a thousand amateur appearances and winning four championships. Last night, at the Sanluri sports field, he encountered something completely unrelated to football.

He was on the pitch with his players for the fourth training session of the season, just beginning. A few steps away, a man collapsed to the ground, suffering from cardiac arrest. Mennella was the first to reach him. "Those were eight truly tragic minutes," he recounts today, with the calm of someone who knows how it all ended.

The man's heart stopped and started several times. "It would come back, then stop again. It would come back, then stop again." On the third time, the coach applied the electrodes of the defibrillator, available a few steps from the field. "I gave him the first shock, and he recovered. Then I continued with the massage until the paramedics arrived: at that point, I stepped aside and they continued."

Ambulances from Senorbì responded to the scene. The 63-year-old man was then transported to the hospital in Cagliari.

Today the first good news arrives, as do the phone calls. "I know he's better. The mayor and the sports councilor have already called me; the culture councilor came to the camp himself, last night."

Mennella's career began in Cagliari's youth academy, progressing to the Primavera, before moving on to Sinnai, Selargius, Serrenti, Villacidro, Muravera, Narcao, Samassi, and Seui. From goal, he moved to the bench: last season at Moruzzo, in Friuli Venezia Giulia, and this year back in Sardinia at Seddori. And it was on the sidelines, the place where he spent his life, that he made his most crucial intervention.

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