Whoever wins celebrates. The loser makes the analyzes and comments. Especially if the national team is involved. We don’t know who said it, but whoever it is is right. If you have any doubts, just look at everything that has come out in these days after the sensational elimination of Italy from the World Cup in Qatar. In the blink of an eye, when Alexander Trajkovski slipped Donnarumma on at 92 ‘, everyone started to explain to us with encyclopedia wisdom why this national team is a bluff, because we no longer have champions, because our football system is a drifting boat, because we will lose over 100 million induced, because children no longer play on the street, because we suck and therefore, not only have we deserved to lose with Macedonia, but we deserve the worst of the worst, even to stay out for the second consecutive time from the World Cup .
The big race to reposition itself
You have heard the titles: “Out of this world“, “The day after”, “The new apocalypse”. Luckily we talk about football. Not even the terrible concomitance with real war has for a moment suggested to us that perhaps it is time to pull the brakes. Which, even if the blow was strong, it is always a football. That Italy, understood as a country, is not judged just because she no longer knows how to shoot at the opponents’ goal. To raise the tone, with a hot shot, it can happen to everyone. The writer has done it too. But now the same people who after the Wembley triumph had magnified Mancini’s national team cannot say out of the blue that those champions are all spoils, that the great feat of the European Championship, with the Azzurri acclaimed on the streets of Rome, is It was all a joke to make us forget Covid.
The ups and downs of the winners’ wagon
The Italian always gets on the winner’s wagon, but he is very ready to get off if he realizes he has got the wrong wagon, said one who knows Italians. Because then these gentlemen, when in July we were all on the balcony singing the national anthem, they didn’t get up and forcefully said: “no, dear friends, look at this is bluff, don’t believe this miracle, it’s a ‘ illusion, our football is a bubble that is about to explode, our stadiums are falling apart, know that our nurseries are dying, that the Totti and Del Piero are no longer born, that in the Italian championship only foreigners who cost four times what are they worth “?
That balance that wouldn’t hurt
It’s okay that in Italy we are all coaches, but a pinch of balance even in football doesn’t hurt. Obviously this defeat is very heavy. Obviously it is right and proper to highlight it. But if nine months ago we were brighter stars than England and Spain, is it possible that now this group is all to be thrown away in recycling? We are not talking about old glories to be retired as has happened so many other times. No, many are young, people like Chiesa, Raspadori, Bastoni, Donnarumma. Verratti himself did not become the last of the donkeys in one evening.
Mancini yes, Mancini no
And about Mancini, do we want to talk about it? Now Fior di Catoni are asking for his head without mercy: whoever makes a mistake must pay, they say, ready to trigger the guillotine. Nine months ago Mancini was God on Earth, the man who had brought Italian football back to Heaven. Elegant, the tuft that conquers, the right man in the right place. Now, however, he must be sent home immediately. Indeed, he must be the one to resign, even if he has a contract until 2026 with at least three million euros per season.