The strange serenity of Federico Baschirotto, who gave time to time

Why a player like Federico Baschirotto arrived in Serie B at twenty-five and in Serie A at twenty-six is ​​one of those things that is not easy to explain, but which are often in the evolution of events. Because football is sometimes a strange mixture of opportunities to be exploited, of opportunities not to be missed, of tactical and athletic maturity that doesn’t come for everyone right away. The fact is that Federico Baschirotto has been one of the best defenders in the championships in which he has played since 2019: Serie C with Viterbese, Serie B with Ascoli. Now with the Lecce shirt he is proving to be perfectly at ease even in Serie A.

It would be questionable, seeing him play, if the problems of Italian football are not also linked to ineffective scouting. But to think back to players like Dario Hubner, Igor Protti, Fabio Grosso, Andrea Cossu, Alessandro Diamanti, or like James Vardy in England, Jonathan Clauss in France, Iago Aspas in Spain – no phenomenon, but extremely valid players yes – one would think that the problem is not very recent and not located only in our country.

In the summer, when he arrived, it was said that he had been taken because he was flexible, capable of making the right wing or guarding the center of the penalty area. In August it was widely accepted that Federico Baschirotto should be an intermediate, a piece in waiting for Samuel Umtiti. However, no one had ever asked the coach Marco Baroni for clarification. They would have heard that “he is a player who has a culture of work, we took him for this, because he is one who has been improving game after game for years”. The coach said this on August 30th, on the eve of the match against Napoli: it ended 1-1, Baschirotto was among the best in the field also on that occasion. Already in the first three games he had done well, he continued to do so, in all those that Lecce played and for all the minutes: he does not take away someone like Federico Baschirotto. One who is perhaps not a phenomenon, there are few defenders like that in Italy however: clean, attentive, essential, above all able to enjoy the moment, without that performance anxiety that often blurs reflexes and ability to stay on the pitch and when it is overcome. leads to pride.

Federico Baschirotto went through Italian football with a strange serenity because it is not common. It could have been otherwise, because if at twenty-two you find yourself back in amateurs after having walked the fields of Serie C for two seasons, it is easy to think that that is your dimension and the dream of playing higher, where television arrives, is unlikely. The problem that seeing him play there, in Serie D, with the Vigor Carpaneto shirt, “I thought it was absurd that such a defender would play in amateurs. He had everything to become an important player, even in Serie B, ”he told the Foglio Mario Boca, eighty-five years old, observer for years, so the scouts were still called, between Piacenza, Modena and Atalanta. “Seeing him in Serie A and seeing him play like this fills my heart with joy. Also because I’m from San Giorgio Piacentino and having been able to see a great defender close to my house, after having brought someone good, very good, to Piacenza and Bergamo, it was a luxury that at my age I didn’t think I could afford ” .

Federico Baschirotto took a while to arrive, he gave time to time, then he took it all, even with some interest. Like the goal against Atalanta, the first in Serie A. He won’t be the only one. With his head he knows how to assert himself and to kick corners and free-kicks in Lecce there are people with good feet.

Olives is the rubric of Giovanni Battistuzzi about (not necessarily) the protagonists of Serie A. In the first episode we talked about Khvicha Kvaratskhelia (Naples), in the second by Emil Audero (Sampdoria), in the third by Boulaye Dia (Salernitana), in the fourth by Tommaso Baldanzi (Empoli) , in the fifth by Marko Arnautovic (Bologna), in the sixth he entertained Gabriele Spangaro with Beto (Udinese), in the seventh by Christian Gytkjær (Monza), in the eighth Armand Laurienté (Sassuolo), in the ninth Sergej Milinkovic-Savic (Lazio ), in the tenth Sandro Tonali (Milan), in the eleventh Cyriel Dessers (Cremonese), in the twelfth Tammy Abraham (Rome), in the thirteenth Stefano Sensi (Monza).