Also this year, as in the past, we had the pleasure of interview exclusively Marina D’Arpewife of President Sticchi Damiani, always present at her husband’s side at home and away. Thanks to her availability, we were able to have a particular point of view: the critical eye of someone who lives US Lecce from the inside without being an active part of it.
Let’s start from the end: what did you feel, that Saturday when, even without playing, Lecce achieved safety?
A mixed feeling. For a long moment, which lasted until Bennacer’s goal, I almost hoped for a draw for Cagliari just for the sake of being able to win the goal against Udinese, at home, in front of our fans.
A thought from an unconscious fan. In hindsight, seeing the objective difficulty of the other teams to obtain their salvation, I would almost say it was madness. The truth is that we Salentini are used to hard-fought conquests, in football as in everyday life. Nobody gives us anything for free, everything we obtain, we earn on the field, until the end.
Salvation, “outsourced”, was an exception.
That Saturday I admit I was stunned, I thought I had “lost” something. I was missing the collective sharing, the embrace with others. I missed my Lecce on the field.
then continues:
But it was an absolutely personal feeling, my husband, on the contrary, has not elaborated these existential thoughts, he is too aware of the enormity of what has been done so far, of the effort employed and of the value of the goal, to be able to allow himself the luxury of also demanding the perfect setting for salvation.
Until the end of October Lecce was playing well, then the difficulties of Serie A were evident and also the series of defeats…
We had actually started very well. The start left us hoping for a championship without too many worries. But the Italian Serie A is full of pitfalls. By now we know them, having experienced them all. We must try to get the greatest number of points, possibly at the beginning, because there comes a moment in the championship in which, for the medium-small teams, the decline can be physiological (together with some questionable refereeing decisions that can prove penalizing) and it is therefore desirable to try not to find yourself in certain positions. Although this year Frosinone has gone down to Serie B, despite never having been in the relegation zone.
As for the second part of your question, it wasn’t so much the series of defeats that worried me, we know very well how that can happen in this category, but, mainly, the way in which some failures followed one another. Defeats must be analyzed. Even victories, to be honest, because, sometimes, you have to look beyond the result.
