From this year the Italian football championship has a novelty that seems small, but in reality it is a cultural earthquake: the referees must communicate to the public, microphone in hand, the decisions of the Var. End of the secrets, farewell to the mysterious gestures, is enough with the “rectangle designed in the air” followed by a tag waved as an ultrà scarf. Now, after checking the video, the referee takes breath and announces the verdict to everyone.

Nothing new in other sports

In other sports it is nothing new. In the American football, for decades, the referee is a ceremony that speaks to one hundred million spectators as if he read the Constitution: he press a button, puts himself in position and explains the penalty with millimeter precision. The audience listens, nods, maybe grumbles, but essentially accepts. In rugby it is even a whole other world: there the word of the referee is law, it is not contested, it does not question. The tone with which he explains the decisions is almost didactic, and players obey as disciplined students. In that context, transparency works because there is a cultural fabric holding: trust in the rule, the idea that the opponent is not an enemy but part of the game.

The Italian melodrama

Here is the substantial difference. In England, New Zealand, South Africa, you can explain a foul to the microphone and remain credible. In Italy, however, football is a melodrama where the rule is always suspicious, the decision always interpretable, the whistle always biased. With us each field is an arena, and each curve a popular court that tries the race director before he even pronounced the sentence. There is no culture of trust, but that of suspicion. There is no fair play, but fair polemic.

And an episode destined to remain in memory could not be missing immediately. The referee Manganiello, explaining a offside, took on the posture of a medieval auctioneer. Set, marked, almost solemn: more than a technical announcement, it seemed the opening of a chivalrous carousel. Only the rolling drum and the knight with the spear was missing. And after all it is not strange: Italy is the land of the Palii, the rides, the bell towers. In Siena the Palio is religion, in Arezzo is the carousel of Saracino, in Foligno La Quintana. Each village has its challenge and her herald who announces the rules to the people. Manganiello has done nothing but embody, without knowing it, the arbitration version of an ancient tradition.

We will also discuss this

The problem is that, while elsewhere the microphone serves to clarify, we risk complicating with us. Because if before there was only the image to be interpreted, now there are also words, tone, breaks, breaths. Every detail becomes an indication: “He said contact instead of foul, it means that he was not convinced!”. “Hear? He tossite before saying penalty: coup de conscience!”. “He spoke slowly because he had received order from above!”. And so conspiracy will not die: it will simply have more material to work on.

This is precisely the point: the Anglo -Saxon culture of the fair play provides that, once the decision once explained, the speech ends there. In Italy, however, the explanation becomes the beginning of a new process. An English referee says “penalty” and the public takes note. An Italian referee says “rigor” and the public is divided into a thousand factions, each ready to read in the words of the whistle the definitive proof of the machination against his team.

In the end, the microphone will not solve our national drama. It will only make a debate more theatrical that in other countries closes in a few seconds. In ours, however, made of bell towers, rivalry, popular irony, the referee’s voice will become a new instrument of controversy, perhaps of comedy, certainly of infinite discussion. We will not have the British composure, but we will have Manganiello Araldo, the referees with dialectal inflections and social media full of creative theories.

Because football, with us, will never be a simple question of accepted rules. It is a theater, a novel, a sports bar that extends on Sunday evening; And for a sport that has been made industry they are not congratulations. The novelty of the microphone, therefore, will not erase the suspicions: it will simply make them more Italian.