How difficult it is to have fair play

It’s easy to say sportsmanship, loyalty on the pitch, respect for rules and opponents. We always try to pin certain values ​​to the jacket, the ones that must exist, that it’s right that they exist. But then the flesh is what it is, often weak, even if the muscles are firm, athletic, and the spirit is the right one. When fair play exists, it is applauded: a nice gesture, they say. When it’s not there as well, even if in a less blatant way, at least at the beginning, before becoming a symbol. Especially when a motivation is found in one way or another. Like the Mano de Dios, which has become a T-shirt design, a poster photo, a Maradonian icon par excellence. Incorrect yes, unfair as well, but Argentina was playing against England and the Falkland/Malvinas issue, so peace and good, despite everything. Or like the attack on the 1957 Giro d’Italia by Luison Bobet, Ercole Baldini, Gastone Nencini and Miguel Poblet while Charly Gaul peed on the side of the road, guilty to tell them, especially Bobet, of not having respected an unwritten rule of cycling at the time: whoever fights for first place in the standings stops to do their business together. Gaul had seen them, he had mocked them, he had stopped about ten kilometers later alone. He was in the pink jersey, he lost the Giro. Right or wrong, in cycling, for a long time, he has never been a crime. It may be that, as Rino Negri wrote, fair play “is the prerogative of noblemen, of those who have plenty to support themselves”.

Fair play, or rather resisting the temptation not to have it, is hard work. That we know that in the end only victory counts and that’s what remains, which allows us to be remembered. We hardly ever remember the second and third place finishers, let alone the others. The winners yes and regardless of how they won. A lot is always forgiven to winners, to those who lose a little less. Fair play is hard work, especially when things don’t go well. Or even when things are going well and you would like to continue like this. Especially when someone has a little less than you. On the other hand, the temptation to do the same is part of the human soul. And it is in those moments that “we need to have balance. And it’s not simple, it’s never simple, because sometimes…”. Javier Zanetti has given and taken a lot of beatings in his twenty-two year career (it happens if he plays on the wing starting from defence), but always in a polite way, with class, most say. And with loyalty, they add. Javier Zanetti he was in Fiesole to collect the international award Fair play Menarini (category “Myth Character”), which rewards those athletes capable of respecting the opponent, the rules, the spectators and above all avoiding cheating. Because even if the sporting result is important, an incorrect conduct cannot be right or justifiable. Because there can be no victory without grit and the desire to win, but this must never go beyond the rules”, says Ennio Troiano, board member of the Fair Play Menarini Foundation.

Javier Zanetti has always been a fair player, “but sometimes it was difficult,” the former Inter captain admitted to Il Foglio. “Because when you play there is so much tension and the pulse is at a thousand”. And that’s where the character comes in, the luck of having him keep quiet “and I’m temperamentally someone who manages to stay calm”.

Javier Zanetti gave and suffered blows on the pitch, a one-to-one relationship. “When it’s like this, it’s easier,” he points out. Quite another thing is when he takes more than he gives. That one can also be calm and relaxed, “and by nature I’m calm and relaxed, though sometimes… also because what forwards suffered in my day is not even comparable to interventions in modern football,” he says Giancarlo Antonioni. He never recovered from the beatings suffered by the former Fiorentina number 10, “also because I had good supporters who defended me, yes they were players born for this”. A lot has changed since then, from the 1970s to 1980s: “Today the state of mind of the players is different from the one in which we took the field. Today they take the field much angrier, the competition is greater and therefore a few more improprieties can be justified”.

Forgiveness therefore, because it is necessary to forgive, above all it is necessary to know how to forgive oneself, “inner fair play”, he calls it Tommie Smith, the man of 19”83 at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, then world record, the man with the clenched fist raised towards the Mexican sky, above all American, on the highest step of the Olympic podium. “Because we can all have a fall, but not always a fall coincides with being disloyal”. We also need flexibility with fair play. “And it’s hard, terribly hard to be a solid man or woman.”

Fair play yes, fair play always, say all the winners, but there is sport and sport and for some it’s easier. He says Federico Pellegrini: “Swimming not being a contact sport makes it easier to stay calm, swimming in the lane you can’t do much and this makes it easier for you not to fall into temptation”. Power of solitude.