With this unique ability to always make you feel good and bring out the best in you, Carlo Pino convinced everyone first to believe in a new company that was born a year ago, that is, last May, and then in the great dream of being able to. Filling the ice rink (no one believed it but him) and thus “winning”. Because, as he always said, “if we fill the stands, we win” since not only do the Varese fans have them, but nowhere else – except Bolzano, as Sergio Visentine told us, who they mean – are they able to become one with the team, giving and drawing strength from each other.

And now that we’ve won, Carlo, how about it? “The thing that will remain in me forever are the tears of the players, the tears of their relatives and the fans who hugged me saying only ‘Thank you’. But I don’t go on the ice, the coach and the players take care of that… Surely when a thousand people sing, the boys’ skates open their wings. The most beautiful thing for me is that I have been given the assurance that there are players here who have Varese in their hearts.”

Mastini’s boss reveals an anecdote: «Last year, after a match in Agora and two years of exile, over a sandwich from McDonald’s, I said to Vanetti and Marcello Borghi: ‘I am here, and you?’. Without “yes”, we wouldn’t be here today ».

Pino is in ecstasy and recalls the moment of victory: «When Franchini approached the empty goal 3 seconds before the end, a thousand people remained in religious silence for an infinite moment. There was a fear that the disc would not go in for the twist of fate… But then the explosion happened and we all touched the cup and the sky.”

For those who just got through it was “two beautiful days with a crazy crowd and an event that was organized in an exceptional way,” says Pino. “We gave a good message to the hockey world with an event that I think has never been seen before, and also for the show within the show that surrounded the games with vocalists, deejays, images and engaging audiences in live intervals on the cube: that also made the final four unique.”

And now? Let’s go step by step, and try to get to the bottom of the tournament as well. The circle has not closed with this Italian cup, but a new era has opened up that will take us far away, while we remain ourselves … “. ourselves, with that magnetic gaze of a president capable of following and loving him.