four words for the Scudetto (and there is no miracle) – Corriere.it

Perhaps four words are enough to explain the moment after the big bang. To orient yourself within a popular festival that will last for months, compared to which the Rio carnival will seem Helsinki on November 2nd, just a few words.

Naples champion of Italy, the Scudetto party and live reactions

The first is “identity”

This is the only city that has only one team. All enthusiasts, the diehards, the cautious and the sick recognize themselves in this shirt. There aren’t the typical dynamics of derbies, the internal contrasts, which nevertheless exist, develop in a dialectic and also in conflicts that remain under the same banner; it’s no small matter, if you think about it, that there isn’t another fan base in the same area that suffers, envies, owls, ironizes and row against. In the moment of acute suffering, of the ascent from the abyss and of course of triumph, there is a single disordered, polychrome and multifaceted community that recognizes itself as such, also because it is incomprehensibly mocked and sometimes insulted almost everywhere. Being a fan of this team also means being a stubborn and often self-defeating fan of this land.

The second is “waiting”

Thirty-three years is a lifetime. An abyss of eras, of uses and customs, of songs and films. An enormous number of people who were there then and who unfortunately are no longer there, and as many who weren’t born yet or who were taking their first steps, unaware of the existence of football, who are now smiling and happy observing the events they’ve heard of it, but never thought they’d ever live. Thirty-three years in which the parable has been terrible, from the stars to the basements of the stables, courtrooms that replaced the playing field, sentences that have caused more tears than lost finals. And the slow, progressive ascent, fill the stadiums of the C series, industrial quantities of devotion and love for unknown interpreters of the undergrowth of football, while all the others played in Europe and filled the sports programs. It is through suffering that joy is built.

The third word is «History»

A wonderful clean and simple story, the consolidation and reinforcement of a splendid idea. Fall in love with those who have always loved you. A company that has silently but absolutely inexorably taken a top position in the Italian football system, the only one present for fourteen years in the European cups, with financial effects that have allowed a technical growth of which today, finally, you see the results. Four second places and two thirds, in the last ten years, is a figure that does not allow us to be surprised by a success that finally arrives. And then there is a number that remains surprising: out of one hundred and eighteen titles awarded by the Italian championship, only three were won south of the capital, large islands included. The wonderful Cagliari of Gigi Riva, in the seventies, and the two of the Argentine Gigante. This is only the fourth. If this is not an exceptional event, one wonders when such a milestone can be defined.

Fourth and final term: “miracle”

In these parts, we have always been waiting for the miracle. A shortcut, a direct and fortunate way to reach a goal without the burden of planning, building, tiring yourself. Grace, a superior blessing that rains down and catches a lucky person, resolving a situation that is often inevitably destined for the worst. A ray of light that illuminates a bit at random, which leads out of the swamp in which, too often, we have slipped alone.

Well, there is nothing miraculous about this wonderful success

There is an intelligent, careful and tiring construction which certainly has brilliant components and extraordinary intuitions, but which is the result of scrupulous planning in which, without enormous appropriations or foreign capital, without exercises of hidden power or networks of acquaintances and contacts built in decades, we have reached the top.

Maybe this is the real miracle of Naples. Having demonstrated that even in these parts and as Gene Wilder said in Frankenstein Junior, it can be done.