Luciano Spalletti exonerated, but apparently only the coach must pay. The president Gabriele Gravina, on the other hand, remains in its place and while the national team sinks between institutional silences, disastrous results and opaque management choices, one wonders about the quality of a project that represents the institutional littleness of a disastrous sports manager and without alternatives. Whose sole purpose seems to be to save the armchair. Always and anyway.

And so, in the face of a phrase like that of Gravina that more than a guarantee seems a threat (“in these conditions I do not leave”) you find yourself in front of an abyss: which is not just a sporting event. But the risk that at least two other generations growing without even knowing what it means to participate in a World Cup by irreparablely paralyzing that which is one of the most important national companies in the country for better or for worse.

“Sorry they would exonerate me”

Then there are aspects at the limit of the grotesque. For example, that of a technical commissioner, who will surely have made mistakes – especially dictated by presumption and a not simple ego – thrown at the press conference to communicate his exemption alone. Never seen such a thing. Not even in a team of excellence. The coach of the national team that says … “Sorry, I passed here and I tell you that tomorrow I go to the bench, but then they lift me up and therefore resolve the contract”. Net of the influence, possible or presumed of a new contract ready for Spalletti – we are talking about Juventus ready to entrust him with the team and a three -year program – which make the whole story not justifiable and not even more logical, such a thing is from amateurs to the mistake. An episode that, alone, would be enough to tell the ethical and institutional decay of the Italian Football Federation. In an image now hopelessly unrecoverable. Behind that image – an abandoned technical commissioner in front of the microphones with tears in the eyes and the squeezed voice in the throat – is hidden much more. There is a technical, but above all political crisis. A distorted political vision in front of which even a mediocre politician with a minimum of common sense, even capable of listening to the background noise – very underestimated quality nowadays – realizes that he is the wrong man in the wrong place. And he sets aside. In Italy it is definitely demanding too much.

Gabriele Gravina, unreliable president

At the center of everything, once again, there is him: Gabriele Gravina, federal president since 2018, just re -elected with 98.7% of the consents, today man only in command of a disaster. One wonders why and how he was re -elected: and the answer is one. There was no other interested in the square. He was the only candidate. The 3-0 collected by Norway is not an accident, it is only the last symptom. Italian football, at least at the national level, has been a comatose patient for some time. Two consecutive world championships, in the middle of which the triumph at the European 2021 read as a turn arrived, are not the exception: but the rule. The Europeans won above all thanks to the bench, luck and some contingent factors were immediately denied by the facts. The suffered path of the Nations League was the natural evolution of a path that is demonstrating more and more unsolvable. So, shooting on the coach, which Gravina called and claimed, is once again the coach. The only one to be sacrificed to cover deeper, more rooted, more serious responsibilities.

Unacceptable absences

Gravina was not physically and symbolically. Not next to Spalletti, not in front of the Italians, not in front of his own institutional consciousness. He let the dismissal communicate Spalletti himself, alone, in the middle of an assignment still formally active for a last game. Never, in recent history, a federal president had chosen to hide like this, while the castle collapsed on him. It is not a detail. It is a choice. It is the plastic image of the way in which Gravina has managed, and continues to manage, the national team crisis: delegating the burden, scanning responsibility, keeping the power tightly.

Two days before Spalletti’s farewell, Gravina thus expressed herself from Parma during the Serie A festival: “I can’t say if it will remain, we are talking”. Not even 48 hours later, Spalletti himself says he received the communication of the exemption in the night. Not from the media, not by an official press release: but by the president himself, in private, with the implicit invitation to make him known in public. Spalletti in a way too responsible even accepted, claiming to be ready to dissolve every commitment. There will be no arm wrestling.

No respect for roles. No assumption of responsibility. Only an opportunistic management, which freezes decisions until they become inevitable. And he does it with ambiguous, almost paternalistic phrases: “It annoyed me for false information on real themes … Spalletti? Extraordinary person, the most correct in the world of football”. The typical rhetoric of those who do not intend to take any weight, but is limited to accompanying the inevitable as if it were a natural, physiological act. As if the failure was always the fault of others.

The age of reason

Ugly bringing age. Gravina, 72 years old in October, thinks he is the right man to solve an allucinating crisis in the next three years of mandate. In 2028 when the hand passes it will have 75. The presidential cycles go hand in hand with those of the World Cup. Even Tavecchio resigned after the failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup admitting that depriving the country of a world championship meant eraseing a generation from sports passion.

Apparently Gravina has made its only program of its political survival. All in a general dramatic situation that also concerns youth, female and that of amateurs. A frozen Serie B championship waiting for a playoff that has absurdly, glorious teams such as Spal that disappear from the field, the accounts of a Pro League inside which the accounts of two thirds of the registered teams do not return.

Gravina’s leadership continues to be based alone and on the consent of the federal apparatus, never on the real confrontation with problems. Nobody asked for a sporting programming, nor continuous failures. On the other hand, who could have done it? Nobody: the system that has re -elected it with Bulgarian percentages is the same that guarantees immobility, armor and apparent quiet. A system that has no future, but that is not even a hurry to admit it.

The next CT

Who will be the next coach? And why should something change? The names already circulate: Pioli, Ranieri, even the (surreal) return of Mancini. But what should change? The problem is not just the selector. The problem is the toxic environment, the strategic confusion, the absence of identity and courage, the lack of sustainable federal programs that in the short term, not less than five years, report the economy and the results of our football at the center of the international scene. The problem is the poison that you breathe around Italian football, the strategy that does not exist, the fear of daring. In addition to the total absence of an idea of ​​the future and the general sense of no confidence of the fans and enthusiasts in the institutions. Spalletti admitted his limits, recognized that he had not been able to touch the right ropes. But he did it with dignity, putting his face on it. Unlike its president, who continues to hide behind the formulas, behind the closed rooms, behind the congress percentages.

The national team as a mirror of a country that retires

Italian football today is the clear photography of a country that no longer knows how to believe in its flags. Today’s teenagers do not remember a World Cup played from Italy. The stadiums are empty or at least full of the wrong people: families are absent, too present ultras who in this cultural littleness affirm unacceptable distorted values. Emptied youth sectors, downloaded. Passion moves elsewhere. On Sinner, on Alcaraz, on other stories, other narratives. Even on foreign football. But the FIGC keeps the route by saying … “The situation is serious, we hold the rudder”. By virtue it is not known which authority, nor which project. On the other hand widely failed.