Football as it should be

The values that were, and still should be, the foundation of sports fandom in team sports in general and in football in particular have been completely lost.

If, for example, Genoa play Torino, all the players of the two teams should come from the two cities. Say I'm from Turin: I should feel represented by a team whose players were born and raised in Turin. The club should be owned by one or more people from Turin, as should its management. Only then does supporting a team make sense. Otherwise, what does it come down to? It simply becomes cheering on the interests of someone who has nothing to do with your city or with you, and who couldn't care less.

When I was a boy I used to go and watch my village team, who played in the third division. I knew all the players, the coach, the officials, and so on. When we played a neighbouring village, a healthy local rivalry would flare up. For a few hours it was “us” against “them”, and the effect of all this was to feel the “us”. It strengthened community bonds, as we celebrated or complained all together, as one chorus. It was one of the many small bulwarks against individualistic nihilism, which today is being torn down as everything flattens into entertainment.

Sport should go back to being that “thing”. Super-paid stars are nothing more than rootless mercenaries who should receive no nourishment. Many of today's mercenaries even “sell themselves” as supporters of LGBT++** causes, only to go and play in Arab countries, hugely overpaid by a culture that is hostile to every civil right and totally alien to football culture. If you want to return to the football of the past, it is you, the supporter, who must first make a decision and stop contributing to and feeding something that is totally alien to you, that only exploits you, made by plastic creatures who have no love for anything except their own ego.

m.m.