Wounded democracy

Anyone would expect it to be not a mega-entrepreneur to raise his alarm, as football democracy is being fatally wounded by the pandemic. Instead, it is up to the president of the largest Italian club, Juventus, to write an article full of legitimate pessimism. Andrea Agnelli underlines how the economic problems, linked to the coronavirus, have struck a deadly blow to the gap between large clubs, and medium-small clubs, further distancing the top and base of the sports movement.

«The last will be the first», as we know, is an evangelical truth, which refers more than ever the marvelous divine justice to the afterlife. And in the micro dimension not of the globalized world, but of the world of football, the "miracles" are very dated.

On the national side, there was a time when Cagliari in 1970, Verona in 1988, and Sampdoria in 1991 won the Scudetto. In the international arena, there was a time when Steaua Bucharest won the European Cup in 1986, and when Leicester won the English championship in 2016. Andrea Agnelli argues that a crack has been created at the base of the pyramid: "Amateurs hardly play anymore, young people don't get close to sport, also because the new generation Z has values ​​and interests that are very different from those who preceded it. , and consumers must necessarily select more than before ». Many believe that the manager is an elegant way to get to the European Super League, which would reduce the national championships to a pure corollary, concentrating the elite in a tournament, in which there is only room for Bayern Munich, Barcelona, ​​Manchester City, Manchester United, Real Madrid, and the like. Maybe, but the fact is that on a sport, which already on its own proposed only palliatives, to avoid the definitive split, the storm of Covid rained down, an absolutely unpredictable crazy variable. And unfortunately, there is no going back.

Carlo Nesti www.carlonesti.it
NP February 2021