A ball of big and small deals
“Banana football club” by Roberto Perrone read by Tullio Fazzolari
It was 1980 when it was discovered for the first time that football was contaminated by illegal betting. Great champions such as Paolo Rossi and Bruno Giordano were involved in the scandal. Then there was talk of "totonero". Then came "soccer betting" and periodically "the sport most loved by Italians" turns out to be the epicenter of a colossal round of illegal activities. The scandal of recent days is neither new nor a surprise. The judicial investigations will take their course and the former paparazzo will continue to be a moralist. Once the guilty are punished and the innocent are acquitted, however, a fundamental problem will remain: if illegality takes root it is because for years the world of football has been risking losing the ethical values that characterize the sport.
To realize this there is no need for scandals and television talkshows. It is better to read a novel like "Banana football club" by Roberto Perrone (BUR, 185 pages, 11 euros) which, in a brilliant and even funny way, manages to tell the facts and misdeeds that happen in football. And since it is a world that Perrone, sports correspondent for Corriere della Sera for many years, knows perfectly, it is reasonable to assume that the events narrated are not just a narrative invention. The story begins with a middle-class mother worried because Pierpaolo, her thirteen-year-old son, is apathetic and overweight. The solution, to be more participatory and also to lose a few kilos, is a team sport and so the boy joins a youth football club. He doesn't have great talent but, being very tall, the coach immediately puts him as a tower at the center of the attack.
In order not to take away the pleasure of reading "Banana football club", it is preferable not to tell the rest of the story. However, we can cite a couple of episodes from which we understand that too many people approach football with the wrong mentality and many others behave incorrectly. Pierpaolo's mother goes to watch her son's matches out of solidarity. And she finds herself surrounded by other parents who scream and fight. They don't care about the team and the sport. In the word football they only see the mirage of an amazing career and millionaire earnings. If this is the education that families give to young footballers then it is not surprising if a twenty year old boy gambles. Another evil of football is turnover. A true talent plays in Pierpaolo's team, nicknamed "dead leaf" for the ability with which he takes free kicks. And there are those who immediately see business in it but don't do it in a transparent way. The coach, gruff but competent and above all honest, ends up being kicked out because the team has to lose which decreases the value of the player. The scam will not succeed thanks to Pierpaolo and his grandmother. But the happy ending of "Banana football club" still shows another danger looming over football. Already among the amateurs and small suburban teams there are unscrupulous people who fix matches and force people to sign halter contracts. And the illegal betting we are talking about today seems to be the consequence of widespread bad customs.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/un-pallone-di-grandi-e-piccoli-affarismi/ on Sat, 21 Oct 2023 05:05:54 +0000.