“I am not one who accompanies the dead.” It is true that the date to remember our deceased is on November 2, but this month risks being, for Naples — we speak of football — a funerary month. Five defeats and polemics not to end, aroused more than from the so-called environment by the so-called coach.
Those words gave her a great coach (just won a shield) and a great communicator: Antonio Conte, after the bad defeat of his Naples last Sunday in Bologna, which is not exactly the last of our Serie A championship, since it is four points from the first, Inter and Rome.
But let’s talk about Naples, which remains, at this point of the season, still running for everything and is second with Milan at 22 points. The theme of my reflection is not the football played — for that you have already found hundreds of pieces from Sunday to today.
The question here is the language, and what takes behind the symbolic language in a popular mass sport like football and in a city, Naples, where football is a total collective passion, a magic that involves people and the city.
It is enough to think that on Monday in the first evening there are seven or eight programs (I wrote and brought to success one) all dedicated to the Neapolitan team, and that sums make more heads of a single program of the national generalist TV. It is enough to think that when I was director of Sport Mediaset, marketing told me that the fans of Naples are a community scattered throughout Italy, and that the blues are the only team of a great city — removed Juve, Milan and Inter — to have followed all over the country.
That’s why Count’s words were a bomb. Knowing it a little, it will be a deliberate provocation, but certainly hard, almost extreme. Giving of the “death” to their players — who are those who each time descend into the field and that you have to treat as children (then children educate and yell, if needed) — is very heavy.
Did he say that to wake them up? He said that because he already considers them “going” and therefore thinks of leaving, as many people think, he too at the end of the season? What is known, with the hindsight, in these hours is that the coach-player comparison will be there.
Now he plays Italy, but then he recovers with decisive games. It seems that the mister is very disappointed by the old guard, both in terms of performance on the field and in training, and of help to insert new ones. It seems that the mister is very dissatisfied with the new ones, but experts reiterate that the company spent 310 million euros in two years for him.
And society, in fact, what does it say? It seems that the great president, Aurelio De Laurentiis, supports the coach. And yet there will be a confrontation.
What about the square? Fresh, almost offense, but we’re still not at the break. Too soon: there is still too much at stake.
But, dear mister, a tip: moderate the words even when — and above all — is angry. Especially when a sport is so popular to involve more people than those who go to the urns.
Article The words of football come from IlNewyorkese.
