Baby gang, Panatta’s cure: “Weeding and shoveling fertilizer”

Kick your ass and off you go, shoveling manure. When we call Adriano Panatta, a legend of Italian sport, one of the best tennis players ever, he is in Monte Carlo to follow the quarter-finals of the ATP tournament, where Jannik Sinner won once again. However, we would like to talk to him about another fact, namely his recipe against the so-called “baby gang phenomenon”. He brilliantly illustrated the recipe during a press conference in Treviso, for the presentation of the women’s self-defense course. In fact, in the Treviso area – as in many other Italian cities – we can no longer stand it. Fights with kids fighting in the streets are becoming more and more frequent, with bullies taking the lead.

The last violent attack, just under a week ago in the center. It was April 7th. A man from Treviso who lives in Switzerland, Luca Gobbo, is kicked and punched by two underage boys who had targeted a lady. The woman had simply scolded them in Vicolo Rialto, in the heart of the city, because the bullies were doing wheelies on their bicycles in an area reserved for passers-by. However, the two boys, aged 17 and 15, didn’t want to hear of it: they didn’t stop performing their exploits and in fact, they took it out on the lady, starting to insult and offend her, and naturally filming everything on their cell phones. The gentleman, 50 years old, intervened to defend the woman, and in response he even got a can on the head. A very violent beating, so much so that Gobbo even had to seek medical attention. It is in this context that the intervention of Panatta, who has lived in Treviso for some time, must be inserted.

CORPORAL PUNISHMENT

«I don’t want to say something strong – the former champion began – but I say it: in these cases it would also be necessary to reinstate corporal punishment. In my opinion, three or four punches in the ass of these kids wouldn’t hurt them. Without exaggerating, but I repeat, three or four hits, then they go away and remain sore for fifteen days, perhaps they think better about the fact that they are making a mistake.” After all, he knows well what hard work and sweat, sacrifice and commitment, study and sacrifices mean. He knows what sport can transmit to you, when you arrive home in the evening and fall onto the bed exhausted and exhausted, when you have to try and try again, when the pain you feel today will be the strength of your tomorrow, when concentration is fundamental and distractions are to be eliminated. Anything but social media, anything other than smartphones, anything other than waking up at two in the afternoon and going around beating people up. He has the recipe for bullies, and it is precisely to send them to shovel shit and give them well-aimed kicks in the ass.

«Sport – Panatta remarked again, again on the sidelines of the conference, even with a touch of sarcasm – is already socially useful. It is much better to force them to shovel fertilizer, for example, which in my opinion would also be very good for their nostrils. Well, let’s say it opens the nostrils a lot. Yes, force them: that is, slightly humiliating things to make them understand that they are making a mistake. Then of course, they are 15 year old boys, I don’t think they are hardened criminals, they are bullies. But they can be fixed: if one wants, they can be fixed.” Significant considerations, which come from a person who has entered the history of our sport. In 1976 Panatta was number 4 in the world: never in his career did he behave like a bigot, but he knows well how to achieve success. Now, after getting married in Venice in 2020 to Anna Bonamigo, he lives as mentioned in Treviso, and in 2021 he set up a sports center for practicing various disciplines, including obviously tennis. An open-air area of ​​2 hectares, born from this great passion for sport, where many young people can practice it.

NEFAMOUS PARENTS

And returning to the baby delinquents, according to him the so-called “socially useful jobs” are not enough to recover. Instead, it is a question of bringing them back into line, also considering that, in many of those cases, parents are sometimes worse than their children. «It is a fact that these children, after they have been to school, return home and their parents are not there because they are at work, continues Panatta -. And often those present are bullies themselves, as happens at the sporting events I attend. These parents are the first to insult their opponents, who are 8-10 year old children. We shouldn’t be surprised if children grow up in a certain way.” True: insults and blasphemies, from parents who, for example, attend their children’s football matches, are now normal. So much so that some mayors even decide to ban access to stadiums – or even small fields – to fathers and mothers. Just to give an example: it was 2020 when in Mandello del Lario, in the province of Lecco, the mayor prohibited entry to families because insults, blasphemies, insults, threats and attacks flew at every match. Maybe they should be kicked in the ass too.