Sinisa Mihajlovic, the coach of AC Milan, never made it a priority to win personal popularity contests, least of all with opponents, when he was a player.
He was once, while at Lazio, punished for directing a racially charged insult at the then-Arsenal player Patrick Vieira. That moment of notoriety will forever stain his image.
But the Mihajlovic who wrote an open letter to Roberto Mancini, his old friend and now rival, published in yesterday’s Gazzetta dello Sport, was the epitome of big-heartedness and tolerance.
He had an idea to put to Mancini, who was his colleague during several seasons at Sampdoria and Lazio as a player, and his boss when Mancini first coached Inter Milan a decade ago.
Mihajlovic suggested a wager, based on the outcome of Sunday night’s Milan derby: the winning coach would make a substantial donation to a charity dealing with the overwhelming number of migrants from outside the European Union who have arrived in Italy during the past few months.
“I lived through a similar thing with the war in Yugoslavia,” wrote Mihajlovic, a Serbian who was entering professional football at the time of the Balkan conflict of the early 1990s.
“Many of my family had to flee the war. I know what it is to have to move, rebuild your and your family’s lives somewhere else.”
Mancini, who began his second spell in charge of Inter during last season, hardly had a choice but to accept the noble challenge.
Mihajlovic can expect to receive some generous applause from the crowd at the San Siro for his gesture. He will not anticipate that he will hear only cheers, however.
He is a former Inter player, considered a star there for the ruggedness and leadership he gave the club in the later stages of his playing career, for the intelligence of his passing and for some venomous free kicks. He was an assistant coach at Inter, too. His July appointment to the bench at Milan, the club Interisti most resent, surprised a few of the blue club’s loyalists.
Mancini will be pleased enough to pay up for the good cause, and to thus see further reflected in the Serie A table the hierarchy he and Mihajlovic had as coach and deputy at Inter between 2006 and 2008.
Inter have earned maximum points from their two games so far, Milan just three. The latter have lost one and scraped a narrow win so far under Mihajlovic, their fourth coach in the last 21 months.
Neither team have looked especially fluent or solid. Given the number of new recruits, with 18 senior players having signed during the transfer window for the two Milan giants, Mancini and Mihajlovic anticipated a period of adjustment.
But given the big money that has been invested – more than €200 million (Dh829m) between them – they would not expect too much patience from directors who have loosened the pursue strings so generously to try to arrest an alarming decline that has removed one of the sport’s great, resonant cities from where it imagines it belongs.
Neither Inter nor Milan qualified for this season’s Uefa Champions League. Inter finished the 2014/15 season 14 points and five places beneath third spot.
Milan, three points worse off, only just made the top half of the table.
Yet the derby remains, as Mihajlovic wrote, “the sort of occasion we are in this business for.”
From this one there will be beneficiaries among the thousands of fearful, homeless migrants scattered around Italy.
If the result is a draw, the Milan coach has promised, both Mihajlovic and Mancini will donate to the cause.
sports@thenational.ae