Don't call it shame, just call it Inter

I find it seriously difficult to contain my words, which almost seem to want to fly off the keyboard I am using to write this piece, commenting on what I saw at San Siro last night, in the match between Inter and Juventus.

I would like to describe the behaviour of bastoni (deliberately written in lower case) and the refereeing of La Penna as “shameful”, but shame is a feeling that has its own dignity, even noble dignity, when felt sincerely as a result of one's own mistakes. Infinitely more noble, and therefore unknown, to the individuals mentioned.

Here we are beyond simple shame. What we witnessed yesterday is probably the biggest refereeing scandal ever seen in a century of football: it is intentional malfeasance, a sick, obsessive, embarrassing and disgusting way of living and thinking about football. It is an inferiority complex that has been brewing for a century and has turned into pure hatred, so strong that no means are spared in order to overwhelm the enemy. A “war”, no longer a sport.

This is Italian football today, encapsulated in last night's Inter-Juve match, in the horrendous simulation by the Inter defender and in the referee's haste to punish the team hated by the puppet masters.

A match between a team that has been targeted beyond imagination and dignity on and off the pitch for twenty years now, but which the media and “popular sentiment” continue absurdly to describe as “thieving”, and another that has turned football into “its own thing”, continuing to flaunt a supposed moral superiority despite being constantly contradicted by the facts.

In Italy, football has now become “unrefereable”. The close ties between Inter managers and players and organised crime were officially dismissed as “childish behaviour” (resulting in a ridiculous one-match ban), and these are the results: who would dare to whistle at their “friends's friends”, knowing that they would be putting at least their career, if not their life, at risk?

The feeling, ever since the strange appointment of La Penna (18 wins and two draws with him for the Nerazzurri, between the pitch and VAR), was that Inter had to win last night, one way or another. And so it went. A victory that was directed, distorted, and constructed on paper, just like the championship they boast about the most and which is referred to in those parts as the “most beautiful”.

The joy of having deceived the referee, the wild celebrations at the end of the match, and Chivu's statements speak volumes about how Inter understands football. They would have acted in the same way even if a goal had been scored with their hands, if they had been caught with 13 players on the pitch, or if at every corner kick the ball had ended up in the opponent's goal after punching the goalkeeper in the face. That is, pretending nothing had happened.

Pretending nothing happened, as in their dealings with the 'Ndrangheta, as with the financial default, as with Facchetti's phone calls, as with the Palazzi report, as with twenty cross-capital gains with Milan, as with Acerbi's racist insults or Lautaro's profanity. The important thing, as in war, is to defeat the enemy by any means necessary.

But this is no longer football, it is no longer shameful, it is simply Inter.

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@girolamomarotta, @sardrt, @mikitaly, @mad-runner, @famigliacurione

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