Naples, the scudetto a raspberry in the face of certain games – Corriere.it

It’s not just any Scudetto, believe me. It is a Scudetto won by Napoli. It is competitive fury, pure and transversal joy in every section of society, in every neighborhood. It’s nemesis. Above all, it is merit. Someone will say: it’s always like this, whoever wins it. But no: I insist. A scudetto won by Napoli is not like a scudetto won by another team.

Napoli are champions of Italy: the reactions, the celebrations, the story

It’s not just because I’m a Napoli fan

All right: it’s my team, the team of the city where I was born, and it’s the team I’ve always rooted for, and therefore this exceptionality I could only see it (actually along with millions of other fans), could be justified by the particular lenses I wearthe lenses of nostalgia, of saudade caused by forced removal. I could see the uniqueness of this Scudetto, again, for a very simple reason: because I’m a fan, and every fan sees something absolutely unique in their team. But I still insist: this is not it. At least, it’s not just that. I’ll give a few reasons beyond my personal involvementand others that fully invest it.

Scudetto «against» the entrepreneurial groups of the North

In the last twenty years, the football teams that have won the championship have all been from the North, and there have been only three

. The usual: Juve, Milan and Inter. To the point that a sort of southern question has arisen on the Scudetto issue. Without wishing to deprive anyone of merits and without referring to any particular case, I still want to observe how the Scudetto is a more docile goal to reach when, in addition to the players, substantial financial investments, articulated corporate structures and even politicians are at stake. It would be foolish to deny that Northern Italy is a richer place than the South. It would be short-sighted not to guess that this wealth is transferred to football as to any other sport. Historically, the teams that win the championship belong to the peninsula’s most powerful business groups. Today we are faced with a miracle. It’s a miracle by De Laurentiis
having set up a similar team by keeping away from debts, without letting themselves be strangled by tiebreakers, pulling Middle Eastern banks and funds into the middle and, above all, preventing the ultras gangs – often dangerously close to criminal circles – from dominating.

The feeling is that we are always last because we were born disadvantaged

Napoli is not just a team from the South, but a southern team supported only by southerners, given that for historical reasons, mainly linked to emigration to our country, many southerners support teams from the north. It is a unique victory, because winning a trophy like this, in Naples, it goes far beyond sporting enthusiasm. The city sees it as an affirmation of itself. It’s funny to hear the legendary phrase of Don Pietro Savastano repeated these days: «We resumed all the chell that is ‘o nuost’», but so it is. The sensation is of always being last because born disadvantaged, the awareness that either you go away and leave your city, your family, your loved ones or you have to be content with what is there: public services that are always in trouble, dilapidated schools, administrators who consider themselves kings, to whom not even national politics manages to put a dam. Today even non-sports people, even those who have never seen a football match, or rather a ball match, feel part of the game; cheerful when Napoli play well, intolerant in undeserved defeat, disappointed in stumbling, ecstatic in victory. The mood of the city, his moodis triggered or disassembled by the team. No one is excluded from this life that overflows from the sports bowl and floods the whole city. It is as if Napoli were not the city’s team but, on the contrary, the city belonged to the team. And this was noted by the impossibility of containing, despite the well-known superstitious vocation, the anticipated and informal celebration of the Scudetto, which started months before the victory.

Bring everyone back down to earth, on the grass, in the middle of a soccer field

Let’s face it: it’s lucky that Napoli won by such a wide margin

, that his victory was so striking, because otherwise, if he had won by a narrow margin, there would have been a thousand different interpretations and a thousand pretexts to appeal to to drag down the team’s merits. AND not because there is a conspiracy against Partenope or for who knows what other reasons strategic, but based on that simple master habit of the usual teams, that habit of refereeing not the match – oh my God, sometimes that too – but sporting life itself. Napoli’s victory is unusual, that’s it. And besides being unusual, Napoli’s victory is extraordinary. It’s a raspberry in the face of some gentlemen. To certain games. Bring everyone back down to earth, on the grass, in the middle of a football field, where gossip is zero and only those who know how to play football better count.

Kvara arrives and his cunning, juggling game makes him the catalyst

And please allow me a personal note: for me football is politics, anthropology distilled in the calves of the players, in the choirs of the fans. So every gesture, and every act, are symbolic for me. How to have Khvicha Kvaratskhelia, an unknown player, my father last summer, pronouncing his name wrong, said to me: «It’s extraordinary, I saw him play in the Under 21s and the German fools didn’t take him». In short, Kvara arrives and his astute, fast, juggling game makes him the catalyst for all eyes, for admiration even for those who will never support Napoli. And his being against Putin in favor of Georgia’s entry into the European Union makes him likeable and courageous, he who had left the Russian team of which he was attacker returning to Tbilisi as soon as Putin invaded Ukraine.

It is pure illusion, I realize: it is clear as day that the triumphs in the ball do not contribute to any reform of society. But illusion is not always sterile. Sometimes it shows a possibility. What you can’t get elsewhere, often for reasons that don’t concern you, you can instead get in the field, in the name and on behalf of an entire people.

Spalletti obsessed with speed

A people and a city that are often indecipherable, as the much-quoted Curzio Malaparte wrote

, whose victory is the fruit of the design of an equally indecipherable coach like Luciano Spalletti. Spalletti obsessed with speed. Spalletti who dragged the players to the end of the championship. Spalletti who has a philosophy: nobody is a champion alone, there is no leader, there is no king. The team is a community.

Spalletti community builder

After all, this is what Spalletti represents. He is a community builder. Indifferent to the climate you breathe, even the most poisoned. Free from pressure on names to spin. Spalletti builds, builds and that’s it, starting from rough bricks or at least considered as such. So here we are, among blue stairways in a metropolitan jungle where flags tie one balcony to another like vines. The three teams that dominate newspapers and advertisements, commentators and public spaces have been stopped this time. This time the Neapolitans took the attention by force, a purely competitive force. They took it without having to buy space for subscription campaigns, without the favor of the media. Pure talent. Talent and that’s it.

Maradona, Nino D’Angelo and mine brother cousin

I was eleven when Napoli won their last Scudetto

I was lucky enough to be a child when there was Maradonaand even there we felt like a community, a true community, even against the blood of your blood that cheered differently: «parimm na famiglia sultant dint’ cà» (as the great Nino D’Angelo of the San Paolo of those years sang). My beloved cousin Stefano – indeed, brother cousin, as they say in my land – was a fan of Juventus, because for too many years Napoli had been a team without victories.

Flesh and blood, life and death, happiness and nostalgia

Naples and Naples are everything to me. They are flesh and blood, life and death, happiness and longing. Napoli has, for me, the good-natured face of my father. He’s the one who made me passionate about this team even before I started walking, it’s with him that everything started… And now, what else to say? We won. Finally I immerse myself with joy in a plural in which I recognize myself.