“We’re leaving, we’re leaving to Serie B!”. This was the cry, on Saturday 30 April, in the evening, in Piazza del Popolo, with the team dancing on the roof of the minibus, the red lights of smoke bombs all around and a city celebrating the promotion it had just won by beating Pescara 1-0 . We return to where we were, where we had been until the moment before the failure, the one that in the summer of 2018 had caused a team that had just saved itself on the pitch to fall into the D swamp.
Since then it took a year for the first category jump and all the others between 2019 and today to get things back on track. So this is how it works? Has everyone paid for their round of drinks and is this time to say goodbye to the bartender and go home? No, not here. Not in Cesena.
Conquering Serie B is a joy that needs to be enjoyed by savoring it to the core, until the end of this season and for all the holidays that await footballers and fans.
Here we are, we can already see the photos posted on social media from beaches all over the world with the Cavalluccio flag which is worth more than any coral reef. ‘Welcome back’ is the most common word, with the B always capitalized, regardless of punctuation, proper or common nouns. Because come on, there’s really nothing common in these parts.
Instead, there is a visceral passion that fills the air, both when things are going well and when things are going badly. Which pushes those on the pitch to hit the ground running, always and in any case, even when it’s pouring, it’s winter, it’s evening, it’s cold and the others arrive on their shins as if there were no tomorrow. The others.
Do you remember the others? It’s not a question of scrolling through the list of this tournament, nor of wanting to disrespect someone or something, because everyone has their own traditions, their own stories and their own magic. But do you remember when the crowd pushed like crazy and those on the pitch flew, not against Pescara, against Milan? Cesena-Milan 2-0, second day of the 2010-2011 season.
It was the day before yesterday, not a lifetime ago. They had already invented mobile phones, fiber optics and social networks. We were here, at home, at the Orogel Stadium and there were Bogdani and Giaccherini who had left Ibrahimovic in silence. It’s not a story to tell in front of the fireplace on winter evenings. It’s something that, since it was there, can be there again. Otherwise the grandchildren will end up bored when faced with their grandparents’ stories. It is better to live stories and then – possibly – tell them. Like that of the promotion to Serie B that has just arrived, at the end of a crazy season, in which everything (or practically everything) went in one direction, the right one.
But it’s not enough. And then we necessarily think about the extra step, arriving at the decisive question. The decisive question is not ‘When?’, it is ‘How?’. How do you relaunch again? With the spirit of a land and a community that has infected a football symbol, with the players on the pitch and the fans all around. Other than the twelfth man, these are ten thousand, fifteen thousand, and more. Eleven against fifteen thousand. Let Milan come too, let’s see what happens. Milan can return, of course if they can. All you have to do is go and get it.
