Andrea "Il Gallo" Belotti perpetuates the tradition of the great "Calcio" center-forwarders and is already the target of the greed of European giants. With each goal, it is the same ritual: with an open hand, he draws a cock crest on top of his head, paying homage to his childhood friend Juri Gallo and to remember the jokes in his aunt's hen house near Bergamo.

This celebration has been seen 11 times since the start of the season and another 11 in the second round of the last edition of Serie A Italian. The cockerel can become a chicken of the golden eggs: on December 4, his contract with Torino was renewed until 2021, with a termination fine of 100 million euros.

For the president of the club of Turin, Urbano Cairo, this value is far from being an exaggeration.

"That's what he's worth." And I would not be happy if someone put those 100 million on the table to get him out of here. I'd rather keep him with us, "said the leader.

The player, in turn, promised "to return that confidence by giving the maximum to each game and each training".

A promise that has been fulfilled with great effort. Belotti is the player who suffered most fouls in this edition of the Italian Championship.

In November, he suffered a cut in the eyebrow that led him to play some games with a curative eye.

With a boxer look, broad shoulders and slightly bent posture, Torino's cock is not Italy's most elegant striker, far from the style of past artists such as Roberto Baggio or Alessandro Del Piero.

He is not the most skilled, nor the fastest, far from it. Far from the standards of modern football, it is the classic 9 shirt, which stands out with the quality of positioning, the physical strength in the divided, in addition to the strong kick. All this allied to a kind of sixth sense, the goal lighthouse.

"You can not stop scoring at any time, not even in training. You need to create a visceral link with the goal. The goalkeeper is the enemy who can destroy that bond, "said the young attacker. "There is not one kind of goal that will make me happier than another. Whether it's an ass or a bicycle, joy is always the same.

In addition to the greed of major European clubs, Belotti's talent opened the doors of the Italian team, led by Giampiero Ventura, who was his coach at Torino last season. The goal light remains intact with Azzurra, with three goals and an assist in five games, three of them as a starter.

Not to mention big strikers in recent years, many Italians consider Bellotti the country's top 9 since Luca Toni, world champion in 2006. It is true that the competition is not the strongest: Graziano Pellé was to play in Chinese football, Simone Zaza is Reserve at West Ham and Mario Balotelli remains barred by Ventura despite the rebirth with the Nice shirt.