Football understood as a sport in its most absolute and primary sense, can often be as ruthless as it is beautiful. The same reason why he still manages to excite his fans, to preserve their community and identity instinct in the face of the wild external forces that tend to commercialize him. Clearly without even counting the political-institutional misdeeds of those who believe or pretend to reform it, punctually ending up mortifying every genuinely popular instinct.
The green rectangle provided its unequivocal answer. In the final of these very long, exhausting and twisted Serie C playoffs, Foggia and Lecco meet. The two teams that, net of the recriminations of those who lose and prefer to whine in public rather than sadly and with more modesty in private, are the ones who have played the best football or at least the most profitable one. The Blucelesti from Lombardy who started with completely different objectives, instead found themselves playing it and did so with the audacity of those who have nothing to lose and everything to gain, regulating teams with a very different reputation and who mostly aimed for direct promotion in B without even going through this lottery. Pordenone, Ancona and Cesena have already paid the duty e the 231 fans from Lecco who have embarked on the over 800 km between the two cities, are the most evident testimony of how much their dreams have become increasingly clearer.
Useless considerations on numbers could be opened here, more than anything else it is what professional denigrators do, or lovers of competitions for those who do it further away. On the other hand, those who love the ultras world in all its facets, in all its more or less numerous or colorful expressions, can only appreciate it a priori. And if you really want to play the numbers game, bear in mind that Lecco is a town of not even 50,000 inhabitants, the capital of the sixth smallest province in Italy, squeezed between its rival Como and the footballingly famous Milan and Bergamo. In times when the Italian ultras movement no longer expresses the power of better days, everything that comes, everything that survives, resists and shows vitality can only deserve applause.
On the other hand, it would be almost redundant to talk about Foggia. What this square expresses in terms not only of numbers but also of power and singing continuity, at home and away, is something sensational, in clear contrast to the historical moment and with few equals in the rest of the boot. If there is any other place in Italy where it is possible to find two distinct sectors cheering, it mostly happens in an evident and mortifying dispersion of forces. Here, however, in the last decade a clear and more than positive growth path has been embarked on: the previous shift of the ultras center of gravity to the Curva Nord was then also able to respond to the South, capable of reinventing itself after the crisis that led to the dissolution of the Red Black regime and bring the historic Foggia supporter sector back to its former glory, especially in those moments when the field team knows how to ignite the necessary fuse to further rekindle enthusiasm.
From a footballing point of view, that wave of passion that had boiled over since the last climb to Serie B has been dampened in the recent past both by yet another failure in 2019 and by the last few seasons that are anything but exciting. Including the very last one in which fourth place seemed like a real exploit in light of the company disputes and the continuous waltz from the bench to which the prodigal son Delio Rossi finally returned.
It is exactly like in love, that just when you think or even swear that you will never fall in love again, burned by disappointments, the same whirlwind of emotions unexpectedly overwhelms you, capable of making your heart beat empty and making you think only ofobject of your desire. Thus Foggia on the field, who started quietly, in these umpteenth playoffs with which no one wanted to delude themselves too much on the sidelines of the painful regular season, has once again made its fans dream. Overturning the 4-1 immediately in Cerignola caused the spark to strike, which flared up after passing the well-equipped Crotone and also exorcising the specter of breaking latest news of the ex Zeman. A Freudian killing of his father necessary to emancipate himself from a figure who, although central to AC Milan’s history, had also become cumbersome and almost inappropriate in current events, especially in the light of his last interviews halfway between resentment and ungratefulness towards what that had been.
The “Zaccheria” dresses up again, almost eleven thousand spectators, numbers that have not been recorded for a while and which are the plastic representation of the desire to definitively take flight. When in the seventh minute the Rossoneri immediately took the lead, the conviction is that fate too is rooting for the Satanellis this year. The stadium is truly a pit, in the most literal sense of the term, but then slowly and once again Lecco comes out, determined to sell their skin dearly, first reaching a draw in the half hour, a result that is already comfortable in view of the return home , even taking the lead just a few minutes from the final whistle, thanks to the former Leccese Lepore who puts it in the crossroads with a free kick.
A punishment in a broader sense perhaps too severe for Foggia, which however – with the hindsight with which we speak, with the games now over – is not enough to stop the Rossoneri fans, who went almost a thousand to the banks of the Manzoniano branch of the lake that turns towards noon. At the “Rigamonti-Ceppi” the expected miracle did not happen, Lecco replied by winning 3 to 1 even within their own walls and flew to Serie B.
An epilogue that has the bitter taste of regret for the Foggia players especially in the light of subsequent developments where the fresh Lecco promotion obtained on the field corresponds to a rejection for the stadium, considered inadequate to the standards of the cadetteria. A bit like what happened in Teramo a few years ago but for other reasons, we went in a very short time from the unbridled joy of returning to the second category after fifty years, to the darkest desperation for the emergence of a restart from the D. Net of the rules that exist and should always be respected, perhaps already a priori, including those cases of even more absurd conflicts of interest such as timeshare, it sounds at least grotesque to break the dream of an entire community in front of two turnstiles or a few hundred of missing places to then not even directly fish out the defeated Foggia in the final, but who knows which friend who enjoys good offices on the upper floors. Football is beautiful all around, but disgustingly rotten on the inside.
Photo by Pier Paolo Sacco
I like:
Like Loading…