Poisoned series, season polluted by too many controversies: terrible performance abroad

The only positive side of this year of poisons, insults, controversies, conspiracies, shouts and low blows, in which Italian football was at its worst, is that it is about to end.

Two more months. Then it will get better because you can’t go any lower than that, right? The Acerbi-Jesus case is only the latest in a long series of poisons that have polluted this Serie A. A disgusting affair that instinct would like to erase and conscience invites us to keep in order to learn something from it. We certainly understood that Italian football does not know how to deal with racism. At most it gives us useless publicity but look at what a coincidence: the Acerbi-Jesus affair takes place during the campaign which literally asks to “keep racism out” – it is presumed – from football (as if it could instead exist outside). Napoli decides to remove the slogan from their shirt as a sign of protest and, in short, not to recognize themselves in the movement.

And would Italian football be united and cohesive? It seems like an eternity has passed, but it is still the season in which Maignan almost manages to have a match suspended, only to then be accused of having gone too far, if it is true that the Friulian club did catch the five racists but sent and won the appeal against the closed stadium and the city denied honorary citizenship to the Frenchman, a gesture with high symbolic power. Abroad they would also like to speak well of us, but they can’t. They recognize that we offer a game on par with Europe, they talk about how Serie A is no longer defense-and-counterattack but a laboratory of cutting-edge ideas where Thiago Motta, Palladino, Gilardino, De Rossi, De Zerbi ( ah, cause for controversy, obviously) manage to emerge, but then they are forced to write down the rest.

Like an alleged referee still working who goes on television in disguise to say that everything is strange, that there have been too many mistakes to be true and that the assessments for which a match director continues to work (and therefore earn) are political and not of merit.

SUSPECTS AND “CONPLOTS”
It’s all a saying and not saying, a suspicion and a conspiracy without evidence or faces. The fact that it is the pre-federal election season in which power boils over helps. An investigation could not be missing on the president of the federation, Gravina, who allegedly forced the sale of the television rights of his then Serie C and ends up under investigation but in response asks who the instigator is, suggesting that it is all a strategy to discredit him in view of the 2025 elections. Even the poisons of the referees would be part of this plan, because the AIA vote counts and there are those who would like to put an opponent of Gravina there. In the meantime, everything is managed a bit like this, let’s say “a la Di Bello” who was suspended in Italy after a disastrous Lazio-Milan and one too many «I saw clearly» (Iling-Ndoye contact and refusal of the VAR in Juventus-Bologna) but he goes to the Champions League to manage Real Madrid.

Yes, let’s send to Europe a referee who has probably been banned from Serie A while De Laurentiis in Europe pushes a cameraman and apostrophizes a colleague who, as an alleged fan of another team, cannot interview Politano. All this after having insulted the television stations that pay to broadcast football in which a president insults them. Things from the other world that the whole world sees. Other managers have also made unsuccessful exits, for example, Luca Percassi who denies a touch while for once crystal clear images flow. It has gone so far as to say that the videos could be rigged.

From who? Ask the conspiracy theorists of the “Marotta League”, characters who populate social media according to whom the Italian league is orchestrated by the top Nerazzurri manager. Who, ignoring them, explains to everyone why he is the best manager in Italian football. Rolling balls seem to be less interesting than spinning balls. Strength and courage, two more months.