To summon or not to summon Sergio Parisse to the Rugby World Cup?

On Monday at 12 the coach of the Italian national rugby teamKieran Crowley will release the squad for the Rugby World Cup to be played from 8 September in France. It will be a list of about forty names, which will gradually be skimmed off and which for now will take into account the injuries of important players such as Ange Capuozzo, who returned to the field with the Stade Toulousain after a shoulder blade problem in February, but who has remained field only 13 minutes, before the pains returned.

In the world of rugby, however, one wonders about only one name that may or may not be (this is the dilemma, it should be said) in the list: that of Sergio Parisse.

The Toulon captain is at the center of a debate on his participation in the World Cup that has been smoldering for a good year, but which has now exploded. In an interview that will be published in the monthly magazine Allrugby, he tackled the question bluntly, speaking of the fact that there is distrust towards him. “I have the feeling – he says – that not everyone agrees on my presence in the team […] and the voices that reach me are not too reassuring”.

Parisse is probably the greatest Italian rugby player of all time. Son of Sergio Senior, who passed away a few months ago and who won the Scudetto with L’Aquila in 1967, he was born in 1983 in La Plata, Argentina, where his father had moved to work at Italtel. Precisely the year of his birth is an important distinction: on 12 September, in the current world championship, Sergio will turn forty, an important age for any sportsman. Still, Parisse is having one of the best seasons of his career. Almost always present with Toulon, on 19 May he will play the Challenge Cup final (more or less the Europa League of rugby) against the Glasgow Warriors and the following week he will take the field for the last time with his club, at home against Bordeaux.

The farewell to rugby has been widely announced, even Toulon has already announced that from next year Parisse will be a member of the team’s technical staff, but one wonders whether it might not be appropriate to grant a last dance to the most present player in the history of the national team, with 142 games played. However, let’s rationally analyze the pros and cons of a possible summoning of Parisse for the World Cup.

Italy is in group A with Namibia, Uruguay and, above all, New Zealand and France. On paper therefore, the passage of the round does not seem feasible (even if the fans always hope for a miracle), so there is not too much pressure. Parisse is not a finished player who should be given a runway in gratitude, far from it: he is an old champion, sportingly speaking, who however is in a crazy shape and can still widely say about him. Furthermore, he would be the first player in rugby history to take the field in six different World Cups. Also, he was the captain of the national team for more than ten years, so he has leadership qualities, but there was no doubt about that.

But there are also aspects that lead us to say that perhaps this is not the case.

Parisse is not called up for the 2019 World Cup, so much so that, according to the new World Rugby rules, he could even be called up by his native Argentina (he never will, he said it several times). Coach Crowley has never relied on it, preferring much younger players, even in times of difficulty. His department, the third line, is then well covered, perhaps the most covered in the national team, so there’s no need to lengthen the squad in this sense. Then there is an “ethical” issue: how to explain to a boy who has been called up for four years in the blue with the hope of playing in a World Cup that he won’t go there because Sergio Parisse, who is one of the greatest legends of sport, will be called up Italian, but is he still a forty-year-old player who hasn’t been around since 2019?

The debate is open: no one would like to be in the coach’s shoes, but one thing is certain: convened or not convened, Parisse remains the greatest rugby legend in Italy and will always be, regardless of this latest, suggestive convening idea .