Lukaku traitor? It would take another personality

The flags of 20-30 years ago flew high above all thanks to our position of economic and political hegemony with respect to international football, now they move like Brazil players like Zico did

Three days ago, at the check-in to visit the splendid Antelope Canyon in Arizona, I split the queue with a child who was wearing the shirt of the first Interista Lukaku, season 2019-2020. I don’t know what country he came from or if he was aware of the furious debate that was raging in Italy in those minutes, but I like to think that he embodied the involuntary response to the boomer molasses raging especially on high-ranking social networks: and the flags, and romanticism, and Totti, Maldini and Del Piero… Without wanting and being able to go back to the times of Gigi Riva (another football, another Italy, another Europe, another world), we have to answer banality with banality: the flags of 20-30 years ago flew high above all thanks to our position of economic and political hegemony with respect to the international ball. Totti and Maldini repeatedly refused offers from the Premier League and Real Madrid, but they could rely on companies and salaries that were fully up to the situation. These days we are celebrating the 40th anniversary of the arrival of the great Zico at Udinese, a club which at the time in terms of coat of arms was not too far from the current Al Hilal: glossing over the legitimacy of the financial details of that operation, recently revealed by the manager Franco Dal Cin, at the time giving up Brazil and the glorious Flamengo for a third-rate team in the Italian North-East didn’t seem like a betrayal to anyone.