Argentina 78 and Spain 82, but also Italy 80 and France 84, if we want to stay on the European theme. Different years, but the same size of green rectangle (perhaps less green), two equally wide goals, a ball and twenty footballers chasing it (perhaps a little richer today, let’s say much richer), two to save it. In the middle, the referee who ‘in those days’, we can well say after a few decades, wore a strictly black jacket. A Calimero on whom shouts and invectives were concentrated both from the field and from the benches and from the stands (but still this today…). And the VAR was still to come.
It was then that we, Generation X, began to follow those matches with interest and enthusiasm, happy to gather, cheering and parents permitting, in the town square. The TV, naturally, was that of the sports bar (busy broadcasting everything from motor racing to tennis, from the MotoGP to cycling throughout the year). Around that television with an already giant screen, in concentric circles, the older people sat, from the closest row to the furthest one, until we young people found room and often remained standing so that someone opted for the less immediate radio. !
Between figurines and long thighs
They were the event of the summer, accompanied by the exchange of Panini stickers (even older ones) in a sort of fun take-it-or-leave-it card game. The albums, however, after the final always remained, mercilessly, incomplete (there are still those who are looking for Mario Kempes…).
Today, a lot has changed, from the centimeters of the players’ shorts (then short on the long thighs – who can forget those of Paulo Roberto Falcão – today at the limit of the knee, almost one with the very long socks), to the neat numbers on the shirt , strictly from 1 to 11, with the prestigious 10, then reserved exclusively for true champions, from Edson Arantes do Nascimento (Pelè) to Roberto Baggio, from Michel Platini to Diego Armando Maradona.
No carousels!
Even the support seems more lukewarm, especially for those who were the most famous teams, there are few carousels, when in the past nothing else was expected, riding a scooter or, for the less fortunate, a bicycle. There were also those who, more courageously, were ready, after a defeat or a victory (depending on the national point of view) to go beyond the borders and mock those who were left empty-handed, or in the worst case scenario, who had shamefully failed to overcome the first group (Switzerland and Italy first and foremost).
The football championships, world or European, today, for this writer, are above all a litmus test, if we want a… wrinkle detector. With each edition (and four years fly by) they mercilessly show us the passage of time. On the pitch, there are no longer muscular young men approximately twice your age, capable of making you fall in love simply by looking at a poster detached from the legendary ‘Gazzetta’. Now you are the one who outclasses them by at least a handful of years and, looking at them, you think of your son who is the same very young age. A friend of mine said it well: ‘You start to realize that you’re getting older when, when you walk into a doctor’s office, the doctor is younger than you!’. Here, turning on the TV and tuning in to the match of the day, you can’t help but think ‘how time flies’. After all, from Lamine Yamal (16 years old) to Kacper Kozlowski and Jude Bellingham (34 years old between them), time rather than flying is… a kick and off we go. Luckily, to not make you pass off as a grandmother, there are still Olivier Giroud, Luka Modrić and their wrinkles!
