Ibrahimovic and the light | The paper

There is still life above our balloon. Not only referee castrations, Juventus trials, but also Naples, with its beauty of play, and Inter and Milan, opposite me in the Champions League, after twenty years that have passed so quickly that our wrinkles look like drawings someone made for us out of spite. The Coppa Italia archived, with an appointment on May 24 for the final in Rome, waiting for the scudetto party at Maradona, dry tears on Ibrahimovic’s face were noticed by the faithful. He doesn’t know what to do with his life so suddenly equal to that of many ordinary mortals, undecided on how to move forward. A fear that recalls that of a writer, unable to decide on an ending: open or closed, a sweet explanation or a sudden truncation?

Ibra would like to determine the time, erase all the wrinkles (did a child draw them?), loosen his muscles, run as fast as when the silver of youth pushed him. As long as it’s fiction (and he’s a great little actor) anything is possible, just a trick, a slowed-down scene, a stunt double at the moment of the stunt. But it’s not fiction, his teammates, the coach and above all his opponents know it well. And then, languid conclusion, he knows it too. Hence the inevitable human dilemma: resign yourself, with a passive decision, take off, defying time (beware of the sirens, which try to drag anyone who listens to them into the waves), or react with the courage of those who know how to say yes to life , which is not only football, with its short runs, the brightness, the center of attention, but a very long, frantic, and often margin, but also mystery, adventure and space to conquer.

Attention, this is not advice, I wouldn’t know how to give it, given the brand of my existence, so different from that of a champion. It’s just an observation from someone who lived a little longer than the Milan centre-forward, who should perhaps dedicate one of his proverbial glances to himself to make up his mind. Scared with stern eyes, or indulgent smile? There was a long letter (it’s a novel), invented by the pen of a great writer, in which a Roman emperor, among suggestive thoughts, wrote about how he feared that his sick body was now afraid of him. The emperor, knowing the fate he was about to meet, resigned himself to “attentively counting the stars and diamonds on the blanket”. Ibra, still upright and fully healthy, must not transmit fears to his body, and, unlike the emperor, not even to his future which will not be “like a stone thrown into a dark abyss”. Because that darkness, at forty, is nothing but light.