The 'Piovra' struggles, but the King is naked
Image created with Leonardo.ai
This is the English version of the post La piovra si dimena, ma il Re "è nudo", originally published in Italian in the ITALY community.
Italian football, which has not taken part in a World Cup for twelve years (and will probably soon make that 16), and is increasingly close to near-total marginality even at club level, has lived through yet another grotesque chapter in these dark times.
After the scandal that occurred in Saturday night’s match between Inter and Juventus, which many believe was knowingly steered by referee La Penna in favor of the Nerazzurri, Italian football has landed on the front pages of newspapers around the world as an example of a distorted league dominated by one-directional decisions aimed at protecting extra-football interests.
A sort of cry of “The Emperor is naked,” launched to football fans across five continents thanks to scenes so surreal that they have made it almost unequivocally clear that, in Italy right now, football can no longer be considered a sport, but merely a strange business operation in which “investors” are willing to do anything to preserve their interests.
And the investors — organized crime — seem to have placed a heavy bet precisely on Inter, a club artificially kept alive despite lacking the minimum financial guarantees required for league registration and constantly shielded from every issue and every scandal by football institutions, both on and off the pitch.
Inter increasingly resembles a true “octopus,” capable of transcending football and extending its tentacles into every sector of civil society. Shareholders of the club, former employees or “simple fans” dominate not only within the FIGC and the League, where every top position appears to be in their hands, but also in politics and the judiciary.
At the top of this structure appears to stand the current president of the Nerazzurri club, Beppe Marotta, not coincidentally at the center of heavy statements by journalist and writer expert on mafia issues, Roberto Saviano:
As long as this man holds a role in Italian football, everyone will have the feeling that the championships are rigged...
👉 📰 READ HERE THE POST WRITTEN BY ROBERTO SAVIANO
A real “bombshell,” joined by the announcement from Fabrizio Corona: soon an episode of his much-feared show, “Falsissimo,” will focus precisely on wrongdoing within the world of football and is expected to feature Beppe Marotta as the main subject.
The Bastoni case, which has dragged the credibility of our football through the mud and laid bare the blatant pro-Inter system, combined with the statements of Saviano and the shock announcement by Corona, triggered the octopus’s clumsy reaction. Seeing itself perhaps for the first time exposed and wounded, it launched a desperate counterattack.
Image created with Leonardo.ai
Opening the dance and demonstrating how football in Italy is no longer just a sport was none other than the second highest office of the State, the President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa. Yes, my friends reading from abroad, you understood correctly: in Italy, the President of the Senate apparently has nothing better to do than deal with football, jumping to the defense of his favorite team, of which he is also a shareholder.
His statements can be summarized in one rather incredible sentence, spoken by someone who, due to his institutional role, should stand above the fray in every field: “Given the robberies suffered in the past, against Juventus we are always still owed...”
But the President of the Senate lowering himself to the level of a barroom fan should evidently not be considered an impulsive slip, but part of a coordinated defensive strategy. The same approach was taken by the aforementioned president of Inter, Beppe Marotta, who the following day reminded everyone of an alleged refereeing favor received by Juventus against Inter in a 2021 match.
Even worse, however, were what many perceived as veiled threats directed at one of the Juventus executives, Giorgio Chiellini, guilty of having publicly complained about a series of unfavorable refereeing decisions suffered by Juventus since the beginning of the season: “Chiellini is a young and inexperienced executive...”
In short, the underlying message seemed clear: “You spoke because you’re inexperienced, but it’s better for you to mature quickly and fall in line, because we’re in charge here.” And if two coincidences make a clue and three make proof, as Agatha Christie used to say, the Mayor of Milan, Giuseppe Sala, added even more fuel to the fire.
Fabrizio Corona speaks about Bastoni and his alleged bets, never examined by sports justice, and announces an episode on Lotito and Marotta
In some delirious statements, Sala not only defended the diver Bastoni, but compared his unsporting gesture to that of some colleagues from the past who, according to him, had committed the same actions before him: Giorgio Chiellini (once again, evidently inconvenient and to be brought back into line as soon as possible) and, incredibly, even Alessandro Del Piero, Juventus legend and long regarded as a symbol of fairness and professionalism both on and off the field.
Why Del Piero then? Many have interpreted it as yet another serious warning from the octopus that sounds roughly like this: “Be careful — if you talk too much, we won’t just destroy your present and your future, we’ll also tarnish your past, even staining the memory of the champions who made your history.”
And with the firepower of friendly press, with the pink newspaper of the “bovine” leading the charge and a cultural fabric now reduced to viewing football more as war than as sport, the “mission,” however desperate, might even succeed.
Thanks to Moratti and Inter, who twenty years ago decided to destroy Italian football because they were incapable of winning on their own, we have become this: a backward league that no longer attracts sponsors or top players and that produces a national team no longer capable of keeping pace even with countries of infinitely lesser prestige, such as Switzerland or Norway.
Football in Italy, a sport increasingly snubbed by younger generations who rightly prefer far more uplifting spectacles, is rapidly dying. And for more and more people, all this has a single culprit: a club that since the beginning of its history has never hesitated to resort to any means necessary to outdo the competition — wearing a white tuxedo that grows ever dirtier and more foul-smelling.
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