Despite increasingly precarious health conditions, Salernitana put herself in his hands again.
Thursday 15 February, Salerno seafront. Some fans hang a banner on a scenic spot in the so-called eastern area of the city. It’s written there “Walter Sabatini: your breath… our salvation” and at the bottom the logo of Salernitana as a signature. We don’t know who did it, it’s not even that important. He describes a deep wave of trust and affection towards the current general manager of the Granata, whom he thanked via his Instagram profile, managed by his son Santiago. So far everything is normal.
Going a little deeper, that banner highlights one of the evils that afflicts Salernitana, an evil that goes beyond the difficult ranking position. To understand this we need to take a step back to two days earlier, to another Instagram story of Walter Sabatini: the one published just before Valentine’s Day.
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The interesting part is certainly the second, in which Sabatini claims that his head and heart are enough to operate in Salerno, that he can live without “lungs, vertebrae and legs”. On the one hand, one cannot help but be moved by his spirit, by his desire to live with every ounce of strength at his disposal. On the other hand, however, this story – and therefore Sabatini’s state of health – raises serious doubts about the club’s actions and the prospects that Salernitana has in mind. The gaze is very short-term, desperately searching for salvation without which the abyss would open without thinking about the aftermath. As if there was only an eternal present.
Relegation would be significant economic and planning damage, of course, but still recoverable in a medium-term perspective. Instead, today’s Salernitana has lost all clarity, giving up on the first great difficulty, and has entrusted itself to Sabatini, trusting in the second miracle, forgetting that, two years ago, precisely knowing that relegation was possible and had to be lived peacefully constituted one of the cornerstones of the company. Two years later, the Salerno club, even before the public, messianically entrusted itself to Sabatini because it sees no other possible prospect.
Sabatini, since his second arrival in Salerno, he has had to deal with a series of serious health problems that have limited him, preventing it from operating at its best. To find that impetus towards salvation, which is very difficult but not impossible, Salernitana would need full-time figures who can work every day on the club’s problems. What Sabatini managed to do two years ago is missing today.
Together with Sabatini, Pietro Bergamini has also returned to Salerno, who assisted him two years ago and today finds himself with a different mandate to support: more in the first person, partly nebulous and in a void of figures around him. Iervolino is distant and there are rumors of a transfer without real confirmation. The CEO, Maurizio Milan, although very present, does not have the kind of pulse that the situation requires; In recent times he has been seen more Gianni Petruccivice-president of the club, who is not responsible for intervening on the team and in the meantime is maintaining the role of president of Federbasket. A picture where those who coach and those who play feel, understandably, at the mercy of fate.
Real, contingent problems, which identify responsibilities at all levels but clash with the narrative and the possibility of a critical debate. Just look at the comparison distance between Sabatini and Inzaghi, following the latter’s dismissal. The DG, in Liverani’s presentation conference, apologized to Inzaghi for having provided him with the team only in the very last days of the transfer market: “I have to apologize to Inzaghi”Sabatini said, “I didn’t help him enough. A series of episodes affected me in January, which is why I moved forward with the transfer market a bit slowly. I wasn’t able to give him reinforcements in the very first days of January, for this I apologize to wishing him all the luck in the world.”
Sabatini, in fact, net of the Boateng and Weissmann cases, operated with the obligation to sell to unlock the liquidity index and make an entry market, as Iervolino was not willing to pay 25 million to unlock it. Let’s add precarious health.
“Director Sabatini’s consolatory phrases are of little use, also because I don’t see the point in apologizing for one’s own mistake and chopping off another’s head,” has then answered Inzaghi on Instagram. The words of the former AC Milan striker reveal a legitimate doubt: if you declare that you were wrong, that you didn’t put the coach in a position to work at his best, why do you send him away? A question which, of course, does not erase his responsibilities, Inzaghi did many things wrong. That kernel of truth remains and a question as to why Sabatini apologized.
The temptation to see it as an “excutatio non petita” is strong and would be a mistake. The feeling, rather, is that Salerno wants the guilty to be sent to the pillory at all costs. Above all the president Danilo Iervolino, guilty right from the start for having kicked out Sabatini, replacing him with Morgan De Sanctis. The reasoning to be done, however, is the opposite: there are no culprits but widespread responsibilities at all levels.
If this reasoning were valid we would not need a priori excuses: a serious analysis of the errors committed, the circumstances and the role played by each operator in the field would be needed. Including Sabatini. The precarious health of the DG clashes dialectically with that of the players: very healthy men who don’t commit, who don’t spit blood for their shirts and behave like traitors. Over all Boulaye Dia Free Mp3 Download e Lassana Coulibalyauthors of dramatic gestures towards Liverani against Inter. Without trying to understand what generates them and why uncontrolled rumors have been circulating about the locker room for months.
This contrast makes Sabatini almost untouchable: a hero who sacrifices his health for Salerno with a paternalistic attitude. On the contrary, if we really wanted to respect his will to live we should weigh his work. We are talking about a dominant vulgate, proposed liberally by some of the Salerno press and then relaunched on social media: there is no strength for a serious debate. There is no in-depth discussion as to why Iervolino, understandably, adopted a cost-cutting policy; on the other hand, a club where the owner recapitalizes with large sums every year does not work well. It is therefore ironic about the correct idea of looking for less popular players, also taking advantage of data analysis tools, to do so player trading. A project that can always be resumed.
It weighs moreunfortunate phrase by Iervolino of the algorithm on the purchase of Trivante Stewart, unhappy because it poorly explained a normal working methodology. The Jamaican was a freak in the midst of a market whose potential we don’t really know because it was crushed before, in a series of internal conflicts within the club which are the basis of the current reality. Sabatini is placed in the middle, in the role of the savior of the country and the author of two sentences like “Football is simple, it’s the men who make it difficult” e “the street and the neighborhood […] you learn much more there than in Coverciano.” The necessary truth, quoting Sabatini himself, is that these are populist and useless phrases.
Salernitana, regardless of how the season ends, needs a strong structure, to navigate the complexity of football and not rely on just one man, no matter how good. Football is not eternally present, it is always in flux, but Salerno and Salernitana seem to have forgotten it.