‘Dancing with the Stars’ 2025 ends by crowning Andrea Delogu the winner. A deserved but unexpected triumph, first and foremost by herself, especially because on paper it seemed impossible to beat the very talented Francesca Fialdini, the jury’s favorite. Let’s see the passes and fails of this final chapter.
Dancing with the Stars is a legalized kidnapping: rating 0
It lasts too long. The final of ‘Dancing with the Stars’ ends fifty-three minutes after one, at the time of vampires and werewolves. Not even the Sanremo Festival, with its thirty artists competing, dares so much. The exhausting length of the talent show has no reason to exist, other than the attempt to scrape together percentage points of share to claim the next day. And this has nothing to do with entertainment or with respect for the public who, if anything, would like to see the winner announced live. In order to bring the dawn, a usual vice of the program for years, everything is put on the dance floor: the spin-off ‘Dancing with you’ with kids dancing to take up time, the pre-performance clips of each competitor are systematic thefts of running time. We are quite convinced that we have seen Riccardo Cocciante and even Lucio Corsi. Did they dance? No, they were there promoting. With songs lasting 12 and a half minutes each, among other things. To regain the public’s affection, Milly Carlucci will first have to undertake a major cutting and sewing operation in the next edition. But above all it cuts. Auditel data in hand, viewers have finally overcome the Stockholm Syndrome towards their Saturday night captor and are now saturated with finding themselves in the company of the unpleasant sensation of having been kidnapped in front of the TV. Compassion.
Barbara d’Urso’s last coffee in Selvaggia Lucarelli: rating 8
Barbara d’Urso finishes the race in third place. But he has already won everything. She has already won everything for not letting herself be affected by the malice of the jury. Jury who tried, with the tact of a caterpillar, to get on her nerves right from the first episode. In vain. There wasn’t the slightest respect for her, for the injuries she suffered in the rehearsal room, zero consideration for her age. Yes, because even though she probably bathes at least three times a day in tubs full of virgin blood, ours is 68 years old. Also wonderfully carried out on the track, with choreography that would have put any hopeful twenty-year-old into difficulty. She has never been recognized for the value she had on the field, but fortunately the audience at home has the eyes and not just the ears to hear the jury bark. When d’Urso receives, from the hands of Selvaggia Lucarelli dressed in mourning, the cup for the third step of the podium, the juror Fabio Canino asks the two to say to each other ‘something beautiful, Christmassy, even if it’s fake’. The first to respond, withering, is Barbarella: “I’m sorry, I can’t be fake”. And, regardless of the aspects of her television past – which now have nothing to do with this sentence, with this last one ‘caffeuccio’ only partially lied. Because on ‘Dancing with the Stars’ Barbara d’Urso pretended, with overwhelming elegance, that she did not want to respond to the jury’s (free) missiles with napalm all of them, despite a panel of jurors in a stubborn and contrary direction, ready to ridicule her as if she were an old slipper. Never losing her temper, she made them pass off, on television, as a handful of bullies with short trousers. We would do anything to get the number of the saint who teaches her meditation, a truly gifted self-control among too many masks of bilious courtiers. Well, by dint of mistreating her for no reason, they managed to make her appear likeable and worthy of esteem even to those who couldn’t even see her painted. Congratulations!
Gratuitous injustice to Martina Colombari (a burglary): 4
Martina Colombari has had a great journey on ‘Dancing with the Stars’. A path that has led her to a significant improvement: now if someone tells her she is beautiful, she no longer gets offended. Praise be to all the angelic hosts, what progress! That said, she was unfairly humiliated in this final. The place achieved in the ranking also clearly demonstrates this: fifth on a par with Filippo Magnini and above all with the clumsy Rosa Chemical, capable only of dancing, so to speak, ‘with her feet’. The jury went against her from the first performance of the evening: despite two uncertainties on the track, imperceptible on television, the jurors gave her ruthless votes, blaming her teacher Luca Favilla for having disappointed all expectations. But that much? Really? No. “Weak”, “not a final thing”, “we expected sparks and instead you were a firecracker”. Pungent judgments given by the same soloists who, shortly afterwards, would have praised Fabio Fognini for the performance, despite having fallen to the ground on the dance floor. And that just before they had closed both eyes to at least a couple of wrong steps by Andrea Delogu, as Sara Di Vaira points out, in firm opposition to the jurors’ assessments. Filippo Magnini is also crippled for no plausible reason, with excessive criticism compared to the value of the choreography brought to the stage. For once, however, the swimmer learns not to fret: he says thanks anyway and puts himself back in the hands of the public (who then, in any case, will not vote for him, as unpleasant as he has proven to be in every episode). We don’t know Colombari’s reaction, we only saw his icy eyes become icebergs of the Titanic due to the bad save. It is true that in the end “only one wins”, but this is not a good reason not to recognize the merits of everyone else in the race, when they have some. Magnini and Colombari would not have triumphed anyway but, especially for the former Miss Italy, the exclusion from the final takes on the contours of a burglary. Really ripped off, sorry.
Andrea Delogu wins over Fialdini-Mazinga (and he can’t believe it): 10
“I’ve never won anything special in life and that’s fine, this has taught me a lot. But this time I’d like it.” Desired, done. Andrea Delogu wins ‘Dancing with the Stars’ 2025 together with his teacher Nikita Perotti. The most beautiful couple of the edition, a friendship born between one pas de deux and the other and which, we are certain, will not end with the end of the broadcast. All those who claim they are a couple should rest their souls, their relationship is even more special than that and perhaps also for this reason perfect without complicating the heart. Delogu succeeds in an impossible, titanic feat: beating Francesca Fialdini, the announced winner, the Mazinger of the edition, by televoting. In reality, Delogu always spends the final on the verge of a heart attack: every time a round passes she remains in disbelief, as if she thought she didn’t deserve it. He definitely deserves it, however, he has to come to terms with it. She brought grace, elegance, doe eyes and all the ventricles of her heart to a talent that desperately needed it more than ever this year. While the others fought with the jury or fratricide hoping to win, Delogu gave the impression of not even remotely dreaming of the possibility of lifting that cup. And then there couldn’t have been a better happy ending. The only competitor who was totally resistant to stochasticism, to feeling like who knows who, triumphed. Because Delogu is one of us, there is no story. Between Fialdini-Mazinga, i.e. the talented nerd ‘teacher’s pet’ and the best friend with whom you can’t wait to go to school, the public was able to choose which side to take. It was not at all obvious that it would end like this. And now off we all skip the mate test with Andrea!
Fialdini doesn’t win, all the ‘Hosanna eh’ from the jury have damaged her: 5
The failure does not go to the competitor, but to the way in which the jury decided to praise her from the first episode, making her, through no fault of her own, indigestible. Very good at dancing, by dint of fiddles she turned out to be as pleasant as the nerdy top of the class who doesn’t pass her homework, the ‘Professors’ darling’. If the jurors hadn’t spent the entire edition trying to convince us that she could walk on water with her hands, perhaps she would have won first place. The problem is that the continuous praise, when last year the same jury even found fault with the divine Bianca Guaccero, has strangled the competitor’s television personality. Now we know nothing about her at the end, other than the fact that she is ‘more elegant than a flamingo’ and that ‘all presenters should be like that’. Ok, but how ‘like this’? If on the dance floor she moves like an angelic creature, despite three broken ribs and an injured foot, as soon as the music turns off, the others speak for and about her, while she smiles undaunted with the same spontaneity of a discount mannequin. If she had had the courage to show herself more for who she is, whoever she is, without limiting herself to repeating the fluctuating script that the authors gave her, she would have raised the cup for completeness: dancing talent and charisma. Unfortunately, she really missed one of the two completely. And even more so no, no ‘envy’.
Fabio Fognini falls, he is a magnet for attention (and a calamity for himself): 7+
He can’t dance, not really and not even to a fault. So what are you doing playing for the final of ‘Dancing with the Stars’? For Alberto Matano it is ‘a miracle’ that he is there, but we prefer science to metaphysics so we feel like giving a more rational answer: Fabio Fognini is the king of the paragurus, the craftiest of all. He knows he has the right eye, to go unpunished and so he behaves on the track, putting charisma before anything else (which he doesn’t possess). And voilà, he even ranks fourth, ahead of Filippo Magnini, who is much better at dancing than him. And despite falling to the ground during the performance for a hold “which in fact I hadn’t managed even in practice, but I wanted to take the same risk and in fact it came out badly”, he slyly admits. This is not a theft, however: Fognini was perhaps the only competitor capable of putting on a show without controversy and grumbling. Together with Delogu, a breath of fresh air. If we were in a dance academy, there would be a sign with his face on the front door and the words ‘I cannot enter’. But ‘Dancing with the Stars’, fortunately, is also a show in which Fognini has been able to prove himself as a star, carrying the entertainment of the edition on his broad and crazy shoulders. Just missing the podium, he placed in fourth place because he is an excellent television character, he knows how to be appreciated for the slapping face that he maintains whatever he does. A magnet for everyone’s attention, even at the cost of becoming a calamity for himself. Well done, kamikaze.
