What happened on Sunday evening during Fiorentina-Inter to the Roman midfielder Edoardo Bove, who has been playing with the purple shirt since this summer, highlighted – and it is not the first time it has happened – highlighted the fragility of that part of sports journalism which when something happens that has no connection with the pitch, with tactics and controversies from VAR, or bars if you prefer, he doesn’t know what to do, making human, professional and ethical errors, some of which are unforgivable.

And the fact that another party has done their job very well unfortunately does not solve, does not alleviate, does not reduce the annoyance. But this is just one of the cultural problems that grip Italian football and beyond. Let’s rewind the tape to be clear: a 22-year-old boy, who could be the son of many of us, journalists, professionals, enthusiasts, fans, etc., feels ill during a football match, risking life. Are you there? Did you focus well? Twenty-two years old, risking his life, playing football. Everyone aligned? And so – I’m sorry to point this out for those like me who consider them a useful tool, even from a professional point of view – the abyss opens up on social media. The abyss that, I’m sure, many cannot see and will not be able to do so even when I show it to them.

People’s “good” advice

On social media, more than religion, political party, pro or against the vaccine, one of the most heralded things is cheering for your favorite team, nothing wrong, no. The point is not to cheer, the point is how to cheer, the point is to use the glasses of cheering to look at and decline all the other situations of daily life, from politics to the economy, from healthcare to health. It is not so much and only one’s own ‘universal secular religion’ is expressed, as the Brazilian Leonardo Boff, one of the greatest exponents of liberation theology, defined football, but the tribal belonging which does not allow digressions, which prevents empathy towards everything that does not belong to one’s colours, which forces one to make inhuman distinctions if one wants to show one’s solidarity to a 22 year old boy who is risking his life. Because when you feel obliged to write “Beyond the colors…” you dehumanize life, subjecting it to the football creed, when you argue about why the match was interrupted, taking away the Sunday entertainment to enjoy on the sofa, before resuming your sad – it cannot be otherwise – everyday life, you have opened the trap door to the abyss, and when you dwell on the causes by alluding to the possibility that he has been vaccinated, you rightfully join the dregs of humanity. Obviously I’m talking about three very different positions, and not superimposable, at least not the first with the other two, but there remains this tribal aspect that is unbearable to me, as if you had to ask someone’s permission to show your solidarity, as if you violated the unwritten rules of a sub-culture that perhaps should be eradicated forever: and don’t tell me that this is cheering, because if this is cheering, football has an enormous problem, much more serious than the millionaire debts that could cause it fail definitively. But on the other hand, in a country that cyclically offends the Heysel dead because they are “Juventus”, what can we expect?!

A drifting football

And in this condition there were few social media managers of Italian professional teams who stood out for their pathos and elegance. The others? Some did not arrive for hours as if the matter did not concern them, but were ready to argue heavily with the roles reversed even over absolutely insignificant things, others were unable to publish the photo of Bove wearing the shirt of his current team, Fiorentina, probably fearful of possible comments and fearful in thinking of having to manage or censor them, because, unfortunately, in these cases, there is never an end to the abyss. Yet I would have expected a different, more courageous, more empathetic attitude, so as not to lose even the last shred of credibility in a job which, too often in my unquestionable opinion, tickles the belly of the worst fans to respond to that employee’s needs, and toxic, of vanity metrics, to feel and make followers feel part of a tribe that every seven days, sometimes every three, puts the same colors, the same grins, grins and faces on their faces (I’m quoting De André, for those who don’t know), to howl against themselves, that is, people who wear different colors but are driven by identical, brutal feelings, with the sole aim of victory which metaphorically becomes the overpowering of the opponent. And faced with these behaviors, even the life of a 22 year old becomes a scalp to be exhibited, or rather worse. Emotion, an unconscious and poorly managed impulse in daily sentimental miseducation, is the switch that triggers comradely solidarity, as if suddenly we were all part of the same tribe, but up to a certain point, because one’s banners must remain above, they must not be betrayed or contaminated, hence the phrase: «Beyond the colors…». Here, beyond the football colours… there is the abyss. Do you see it now?