With the transfer market, Serie A can also dream

Let’s face it, this is the most beautiful time of the year. And not just because the Women’s World Cup hasn’t started yet, but because these are the weeks of illusion: nothing is worse than the transfer market to make us feel frustrated, but nothing is better than the transfer market to make us believe that the impossible is possible. Even a fan of an Italian team dreams during the transfer market. Now that the end of the championship is far away and the training camps have not yet begun, this is the main moment of bullshit elevated to dogma, of bullshit passed off as absolute truth, of the half-saw presented as the new George Best, of the “but who knows this… ” which in a few months will become “I told you it was very strong”. It’s the moment in which we alternate anger because it seems that our favorite team threatens us to be a slut all summer by selling off our idols to the first one that passes, and love because in any case those colors are unique in the world and we would follow them everywhere. It is the moment in which transfer market journalists become gurus, and even if they invent names and negotiations for us they are right, and if they say “Haaland allo Spezia” the Spezia fan really thinks that the Manchester City forward can go and play in Italian Serie B, and if it doesn’t go then it’s the fault of the president of Spezia, not of the drunk journalists. It is the moment in which, reading the salary figures, we repeat “eh but by now money has ruined this sport, there are no more flags, now footballers do everything for money”, exactly as we said ten years ago, twenty years ago, thirty, forty years ago, and as our fathers before us said.

Above all, it’s the moment when the countdown to the Premier League 2023/2024 begins: there are less than five weeks left for Burnley-Manchester City and this already makes me feel much better. Not only that, this year the Champions League final will be played at Wembley, and I think it’s obvious that we English will do an encore. And speaking of the transfer market, in our parts the story of the Manchester United goalkeeper is very passionate. The Red Devils, fresh from the blow Mount who was dangerously (for him) given the number 7 shirt, would like to take Onana and unload De Gea. Inter doesn’t give up, United raises but not too much, and in all of this the goalkeeper who defended Old Trafford’s goal for so many years, also wearing the captain’s armband, has an expired contract. But above all, he too has succumbed to the latest communicative trend of footballers: enigmatic tweets or posts on Instagram, emoticons used to express discomfort, photos posted to say and not say. Brozovic was a master in the days of the negotiations with the Saudis, De Gea tweeted the emoticon of a juggler two days ago, giving journalists and fans something to write about for a while. What will it mean? That United is a circus? Or was it a more philosophical message, a reflection on the precarious balance of life? Five days ago he tweeted “Life is beautiful”. A few days before a little face that yawns. For days the exegetes have been working to discover the mystery, just as they are ready – especially in Italy – to make the front pages on a player’s likes on posts from other teams. De Gea is right about this: what a whirlwind.