There are times when football reminds us why the presence of the public is decisive for its development. It’s those times when all those who go to the stands to make noise, to “score the goal” and to be the fateful twelfth on the pitch, fully succeed in their task. And they also demonstrate to the coldest calculators how much the heat of cheering is a determining factor. Only to spend those hundred or so minutes differently from how you would spend them in front of a television or with your ears turned to the immortal radio.
Many times we talk about the past, about how much better stadiums and audiences once were. The reality is that they were certainly freer. Definitely less influenced by contemporary society, crippled by social media and a hundred thousand more distractions than a youth who grew up playing games in the middle of the street. But I don’t think they were more passionate. And today I had further proof of that. Today, when theOlympic he shrugged off his good suit and started singing for the fun of it, waving flags in every sector, lighting smoke bombs even in the grandstand and stir up the neighbor – as an old banner of the Curva Sud said -, I understood that even the inertia of the field could not be different from the 2-0 accrued. I understood that those two wonderful celebrations for the goals of El Shaarawy and Kumbulla were the result of a “fair” stadium climate. Of those days when everyone enters the stands to give something more.
We could stay here until tomorrow to rehash cliches about football as the maximum representation of popular transversality or about the great role that the ultras play in being the driving force, in being the fuse that allows them to compare their chants to the “bomb that will explode” , but perhaps it would be an exercise in maudlin redundancy. A work that more than anything else concerns all those interested in “romanticism”, which then needless to say are precisely those who have so inflated this aspect as to make it nauseating. Instead, the concept of popular push, of Italian cheering should be taken. Indeed, I support the Italians. Those who are still today a pilgrimage destination from all over the world, even from countries and fans that could afford to look down on us. But they don’t, because evidently they look at the expression of the old man who, despite an entire life behind him, is panting, trembling and suffering in injury time, afraid of the opponents who push forward, or of the middle-aged lady who, on the occasion of a goal eaten could easily become a serial killer.
I think the collective madness of Italians for football is still inimitable, the problem is all the overabundance of questionable priorities that have invested them in the last thirty years. In addition to a repression that really in our country, often and willingly, also concerned the last fan in the stands.
I put the performance of tonight’s Roma supporters among the best first fifteen I’ve ever witnessed. And above all because it wasn’t a semi-final, a decisive match for the fate of the season, a derby or an important match for the Scudetto. But of the first leg of a round of 16 of theEuropa League, a competition that even the most dreamy knows to be difficult if not impossible not only to win, but also to compete until the next round. So the demonstration of love (if needed) was total.
As for the guest sector, nothing special to report. THE supporter Basques present themselves in 1,600 behind the patches of the main group the push, which is positioned in the lower part cheering with a certain constancy but hardly managing to drag the whole sector, with the exception of the scarves which on various occasions have chromatically exalted the away sector. However, there will be time and opportunity to deepen the Real Sociedad supporters during the second leg, when it will certainly be interesting to observe how life inside and outside the stadium takes place Anoetain addition to including one of the most famous cities in the Basque Country, which has always been a cross and delight of the Iberian Peninsula.
The last scarf takes possession of the bleachers, on the notes of “Grazie Roma”. The public begins to displace and the streets around theOlympic they get congested as usual. In the distance I see a child playing with a ball – evidently brought from home – on the Ponte della Musica. He is forcing his father to defend a fantasy door, remedied with two stones. Clearly there is still hope!
Simone Meloni