Serie A has just started and already there is talk of flops for some teams, shame for others and spectacle for others still. Yet the season is long and this will continue until June 2025 with the FIFA Club World Cup, how is it possible, then, to read such clear judgments with the market that has yet to conclude and with so many games still to be played?

Some might reply that it’s the fault of the Internet and the algorithm, that is, the speed with which reports must be written and trended to be read. So from X (formerly Twitter) to Instagram, passing through TikTok and YouTube, it’s all a swarm of analyses, comments and, above all, judgments, often trenchant, because that’s what the web wants, they say.

A chain of “affections” that is difficult to break

But it is not so different from what happens in traditional media, newspapers, radio and television, where in-depth analysis is now relegated to a niche audience, while the rest are fed daily controversies, keeping the rope perpetually taut – will it break sooner or later? -, titillating the attention of most fans, who then fight in the comments or on their respective social accounts: “a whole chain of affections” and effects that is difficult to break.

One of the case studies is certainly what happened with Pirlo as Juventus coach, he was called Maestro and Continassa was transformed into Pirlolandia, to mimic Zemanlandia, the furthest thing from Juventus fans. We all know how it ended and, in the meantime, that journalist went from following Juventus to Milan and now who knows where.

Why this language?

The question we should all ask ourselves is: why? Why all this hyperbole to tell the story of an ‘easy’ victory? Why all this harsh judgment for a draw that can hide, instead, a bright future? To sell: newspapers, copies, perpetually in decline – perhaps some intervention should have been made a few decades earlier and certainly not by chasing the fans’ guts as is done now -, radio, advertising and pay TV, not exactly in good health, subscriptions, and yet they also invented fan commentary, the absolute evil of sports journalism, in my modest and immutable opinion. Here, then, everything becomes beautiful, definitive, epochal, enjoyable, shameful, immortal, unforgettable, everything a bit too much (too muchsay the young people), especially for those who, like me, belong to Generation X and have seen in the same championship: Maradona, Platini, Zico, Falcao, Junior, etc.

Adani, Conte and Sarri

The problem is that even the protagonists, footballers, coaches and presidents, have adapted to this type of language, and often do not even have the intellectual tools to keep the media on the same wavelength. Allegri, once he stopped winning, began a cloying long-distance skit with Adani, where it was difficult for both sides to understand where the football story began and where the circus ended. Sarri and Conte are now famous for their constant complaints, from the calendar to the journalists’ questions, with that aura of drama, especially the latter, which is not very suitable for the game of football or the times we are living in: even less so. Then there are those all-football data analysis coaches who when they win show their chest out, taking compliments, and when they lose they talk about something else, managing to never think about the game, about any tactical errors and the like. Knowing full well that controversy is the perfect refuge to send everything to a scuffle and never have to publicly face one’s responsibilities, sporting ones of course. They too, it is worth underlining, are sellers of themselves, just like the footballers, and of the brand of the club they represent at that moment: super professionals, who are no longer required to be attached to the colours, which have suddenly become unprofessional.

Language is the result of many factors, especially cultural ones. Here, the sporting one expresses the level of culture, sporting, that we have in Italy, objectively low. Where the opponent must be beaten, humiliated, mocked, enjoying it, where he is rarely recognized for his merits in victory, where the defeat is always the fault of the referee. The result is there for all to see, moving the nonsense of the ridiculous further and further.