Tonali leaves Milan for Newcastle: if you are a professional, it is better not to talk about feelings

Professional is who, writes Treccani, “exercises an intellectual or liberal profession as a primary economic activity”. In the free market it works that those who are better, those who excel at something, have more chances than others – or at least that’s almost always the case – of seeing their business paid more. Football is no different from any other profession. The market is free, often quite meritocratic and the clubs honor their players well, especially the very capable ones. In football, however, workers have the problem of not only being judged by their employers, but also by those who watch the spectacle that sport puts on. And those who assist have the habit of not limiting themselves to empirical observation of what happens on the pitch, but are linked to somewhat vague concepts ranging from faith to passion and a whole other series of dogmas that a team brings with it, like membership. You belong to a shirt, think the fans. Membership is a big problem. It’s hard to get out. Especially when it happens that a footballer is so incautious as to fall into the temptation of not only being an athlete, but also a fan and the colors he wears in the game. When this is the case, errors always multiply. Because then phrases like “forever”, “love”, “flag” come out. We need to escape from all this, avoid how plague victims are avoided. They are just problems. Go explain to those who think that “forever” is really forever, that that “forever” wasn’t really forever, but only for as long as possible. Go and explain that you are a professional and therefore linked to the market and not belonging to colors, to that something that goes beyond just wearing a football team shirt. Very hard.

He knows something Sandro Tonali leaving Milan and Milan, his Milanfor Newcastle.

You can’t say anything to Sandro Tonali. He is a capable footballer, he has managers from all over Europe who would like to bring him to their team and who are willing to pay a lot to do so and sign a long and much cheaper contract with him than the one he would receive at Milan. He is a professional who knows how to do his profession as a midfielder well and therefore it is right that he receives the right compensation for his skill, or at least what the others, the managers, think is the right compensation for him. On this in Italy and England are very much in disagreement, or rather would be completely in agreement if the directors of the Italian clubs had the economic potential of the English ones. It is not so. In the Premier League they honor work better. So much for the unions.

Nothing can be said to him even about the fact that then, when he professed love for Milan and that he dreamed of wearing those colors for the rest of his life, he was sincere. And it is also difficult to imagine that legitimate sense of bewilderment in having to choose whether to stay where you would like to be or to go elsewhere. A bewilderment that exists even when what you leave guarantees a lot of money, but elsewhere offers much more. Also because to be in a team two (at least) must agree and sometimes when the other is also interested in the buyer’s economic arguments then you never know who prevailed in the decision to part ways.

Emotionality is something to be avoided in business, in working life. And the saying those who leave the old road for the new one know what they are leaving but do not know what they find it is as true as it is useless to the professional. All that would be needed is a communication manual for athletes, and therefore professionals. The first rule should be: never express feelings because they could be used against you by the typhoid court. Which was the old rule of Nereo Rocco: this is silent and do the cassi toi that you are not wrong. He told it to Gigi Simoni, his footballer at Turin, who was ready to express his happiness for the return to Serie A of the first team in which he played, Mantova. It was 1966.