Julio Cesar will retire from football on Saturday night and says the treble with Inter was “certainly the high point of my career”.
The Brazilian joined Flamengo in January for a three month spell, and on Saturday night he’ll face América Mineiro at the Maracana for his final game.
“The last game, yes, it will be wonderful, but a piece of my life is ending,” Cesar told Gazzetta dello Sport.
“These 20 years have been beautiful, more than a dream. Never, even when I was a kid, could I have imagined such a career.
“Saturday will be a tribute, not to me but to those who allowed all this to happen: Flamengo, their fans.
“They took me in when I was a child and stayed beside me until I was a man, ready for European football. I’ll thank them.
“Inter fans know that I don’t care about the cameras, I’ve never been ashamed to show emotion. If I want to cry, I’ll cry.
“I’ve enjoyed these three months even more than I’d imagined, I saw myself as a kid from Flamengo again, at 38 I felt 17 like them.
“A few weeks ago Vinicius said something which got me in the heart: ‘I asked to stay here at Flamengo until the end of the season because you’re here, to learn something from you’.”
Cesar then looked back on his career, starting with his best save.
“Everyone talks about [Lionel] Messi in the semi-finals of the Champions League and maybe they’re right.
“In that game, in that moment, against that opponent… one of the first things they teach we goalkeepers is that a save is only beautiful if it’s important. That was very important.
“My biggest emotion? Don’t make me try… can I give you three? The first was the Campeonato Carioca 2001, Flamengo vs Vasca Da Gama.
“We had to win by two goals, Dejan Petkovic scored to make it 3-1 on a free-kick two minutes from the end.
“The second is Madrid, the Champions League. That was definitely the high point of my career. The third one, 2014 World Cup: the two penalty shootouts against Chile in the Last 16.”
Those shootouts were followed by a 7-1 loss to Germany in the semi-final though…
“I struggled to understand what happened, I still don’t really know today,” Cesar admitted.
“Germany knew our weaknesses, but we showed them to them like an open book. We played badly, badly, badly.
“I was on the pitch thinking: ‘come on Julio, it’s a nightmare, wake up now’.
“Then Thiago Silva at half-time. It was already 5-0, he tried to give us a shake. But there was an eerie silence in that dressing room, no-one was talking.
“Football is like that, it’s like life. It doesn’t always embrace you, and sometimes it makes you face unimaginable things. That's where you have to prove you're a strong person inside.
“Did something like that happen to Gigi Buffon? That penalty you could give or not give, but if you’re the referee you can also do the other part and not send off Buffon.
“That said, Gigi said himself that he could have expressed certain things in a different way. But when the adrenaline is pumping, you can say things that you can regret later.
“I never did that in such important moments, I said everything to [Gianluca] Rocchi when I saved a penalty from [Marek] Hamsik and he didn’t notice that [Hugo] Campagnaro had come in to the box well in advance to score the rebound.
“And I got in to it with [Nicola] Rizzoli who whistled for a penalty for a non-existent foul on [Kevin-Prince] Boateng. In fact he later said publicly it was wrong.”
Cesar was then asked to tell a story from his career he hadn’t told anyone…
“I had recently arrived at Inter, we were second in the league. Palermo-Inter.
“In the midweek [Coach Roberto] Mancini tells me: ‘I know Eugenio Corini well, if we put the wall on the other side on free-kicks we’ll cause him problems’.
“I was perplexed, but I told him: ‘you’re the boss, I’ll do what you tell me’. On Saturday Corini gets a free-kick and puts it in the top corner.
“Three weeks later we go to Turin to play Juventus. Mancini: ‘I played with [Pavel] Nedved, look out for a free-kick low to your near post’.
“Nedved gets a free-kick. Over the wall and 2-0. The journalists started hammering me: how bad is Julio Cesar on free-kicks?
“I took Mancio to one side and said: ‘Boss, let me do this. If I’m wrong I’m wrong, but from now on I choose, OK?”
Fucking Mancini, that's amazing.
