San Siro, Italian derby, minute 42. Federico La Penna draws the second yellow card, Pierre Kalulu goes off, and in the meantime Italian football – that splendid cultural machine capable of transforming a contact into a trial, and a trial into a religious war – reminds us that the blame, here, always lies with the third party. Of the referee. Of the notary in the field. Of the scapegoat with whistle and cards.

Only this time the “third” is not even the sole culprit: the point is that the expulsion arises from an obvious simulation, with the VAR unable to intervene because the protocol does not allow the review of yellow cards, not even when the second yellow becomes red. Translation: technology sees, but by regulation it must pretend nothing happens. It’s magical realism applied to the rulebook: “We all know it, but we can’t say it.”

Challenge

The designer Gianluca Rocchi defined the decision as “clearly wrong” and also pointed the finger at the simulation. And in the meantime the boundaries of public discourse, as often happens, have fallen: death threats to the referee, police advising him not to leave the house. This is the part that is less satirical and more scary: a championship that calls itself a “spectacle” and then produces intimidation.

For some time now, at an international level, we have been discussing whether to introduce the challenge into football as already happens in other sports. That is, giving the benches a “call” per game – or with similar rules -, a sort of green card to ask the referee to review an episode, on the model of other sports. On paper: less hysteria, more responsibility, more “hygiene” of the game.

But now let’s imagine the same thing transplanted into Italian football, which is not an ecosystem: it is a choral novel in which everyone talks and no one listens, and the only neutral figure is hated by definition.

The challenge here risks becoming not a cure, but an amplifier. Because in a country where “they stole our game” is a conditioned reflex, the challenge would not be experienced as an instrument of justice, but as a permanent right of appeal. Another chapter of the same liturgy: bench that calls, bench that screams, commentary that instructs the popular court, social networks that issue the sentence before the replay. Italy doesn’t just have a regulation problem: it has a problem of sports education, that is, of emotional literacy in the face of mistakes, both one’s own and those of others.

And in fact the case of San Siro is perfect because it shows two contemporary truths: VAR is not enough if you gag it with protocols; VAR is useless if we continue to reward the art of “getting away with it”.

And here the paradox comes into play, the challenge could also save an episode like that of minute 42: a call, review, warning for simulation, and end of the judicial novel. But in Italian football the question is not “is the decision correct?”, it is “who benefits from it being correct?”. And when this is the grammar, every tool becomes a weapon.

The Italian context

The truth is that the challenge can only work if the context changes, not the other way around. That is: if you tie it to one cultural sanction of simulation, automatic warning when the review certifies it, and stop celebrating the “smart” as a popular hero; if you use it to plug obvious holes in the protocol, for example the revision of the second yellows which become expulsions, today a declared short circuit; if you accompany it with transparency – audio and motivations -, because superstition grows in the information vacuum.

Otherwise the challenge in Serie A would become a typically our object: a reform designed to reduce the noise that would end up institutionalizing it. A bit like putting an intercom on the chaos: you don’t eliminate it, you just make it easier to ring.

The San Siro case, in the end, is a cruel reminder: we are not faced with football “in disarray” due to the fault of the referees. We are faced with a football in which refereeing errors are the favorite fuse because they allow everyone not to talk about what really burns: the culture of cunning, the education of defeat, the idea that the rule is an obstacle and not a pact. In this sense, the challenge is not a medicine: it is a test. It measures whether a system really wants to heal or whether it just wants a new way – more technological, more televised, more litigious – to continue getting sick in style.

Around the World of Shame

Then the same thing always happens: the episode comes out of the box and does its real job, which is not “deciding a game”, but defining an image. The Italian derby becomes a global meme, an export clip. It’s no longer Inter-Juventus: it’s “football where one falls without contact and the other is kicked out”. It is a narrative genre. And when a narrative genre works, the international press doesn’t miss it.

Here we are not talking about “cunning”, nor about “profession”, nor about those railway after-work words with which Italian football ennobles the shortcut. Here we are talking about a very simple thing: a simulation made to get an opponent sent off. It is unsportsmanlike in its pure state, without literary extenuating circumstances. And when it happens worldwide – in the Italian derby, not in a provincial pitch – it’s not “a moment”. It’s a message.

The message is: “If it suits you, you can cheat. At most, make a gesture of apology and move on.” And no: it must not pass. Because this stuff isn’t folklore. It is the basic pollution that we then complain about when we say that “in Italy there is no sporting culture”. Sports culture is not a conference: it’s what you tolerate when it suits you.

And here comes the circle-botism of the managers. When on television you start playing the shell game – “he was wrong, however…”, “it’s not good, but…”, “we condemn, however…” – you are not protecting a boy: you are protecting the idea that you can always stay in the middle, always save face, always keep morals and interests together as if it were a successful aperitif. It is exactly that “but” that keeps the system going: a country where responsibility is always optional and shame lasts as long as a story on Instagram.

If a captain, or an iconic player, does something like this, the correct line is not “enough pillory”. The correct line is: “He did something dirty, period.” Without diminutives, without caresses, without the anxiety of not displeasing anyone. Because the pillory is rubbish – the journalists who live on social media know this very well and do not have the camel troops that the footballers have to defend themselves -, yes, and threats and hatred must be condemned – always -, but using the horror of the threats as a narrative shield to water down the gesture is an old trick: you shift the attention from the blame to the reaction, and in the meantime the blame evaporates.

National: yes or no?

In these hours there are those who ‘rant’ that Bastoni should not wear the national team shirt, transforming it into the substitute court of the championship. But one thing must be said clearly: those who wear blue do not just represent a technical level, they represent an idea of ​​sport. If you don’t want to call it “punishment”, call it “standard”. Call it “consequence”. Call it what you like: but if after a simulation like this, seen worldwide, everything remains the same, then the problem is not the VAR, it’s not the protocol, it’s not the referee. The problem is that Italian football has decided that this stuff is compatible with itself.

And in fact the final scene is perfect and sad: the replay shows everything, the regulation does not correct, the debate becomes civil war, and the managers and coaches try to close the gap with the adhesive tape of the nonsense of the ridiculous. In the meantime, the gesture remains there, indelible: not a mistake, but a choice. And a choice, in football as in life, qualifies those who make it.

To be honest, Bastoni is one of those players who has always enjoyed positive criticism, he made his debut with the wind in his sails, but in the national team there are no memorable performances. And this story strips it away, not so much technically as symbolically. Because a defender who should represent solidity and a sense of limits ends up “naked” in front of the saddest shortcut: winning a duel not with the body, but with the drama. And when it happens, criticism doesn’t destroy reputation: replay destroys it.

The contradiction, therefore, is that the “cure” of the challenge would only really work if we, here, stopped using every novelty as a new opportunity to try the referee and sanctify the smart one. Otherwise the challenge is not an antibiotic: it is a microphone. And we, with the microphone, are very good.