Even politics, taking it broadly, is a sport, but if you do, well, politics then you don’t have time to play sports. And in fact, politicians are almost always the ones in the stands to applaud the exploits of others, while sports memories date back to the time of adolescence. Prime Minister Mario Draghi, speaking to Save The Children’s Punto Luce Community, spoke of his love for basketball. “As a child, from eleven to twenty-one, I would have liked to be an athlete, what I liked most was playing sports, become a good basketball player. The role? Playmaker ». That is: the one who directs the game, the director of the team (including the government) in his destiny.
The premier who preceded him, Giuseppe Conte demonstrated his football skills by dribbling live (very well, actually), Matteo Renzi has a son who plays professional football, but he prefers jogging, cycling and, above all, tennis, a passion that he also shares with former premier Paolo Gentiloni.
Luigi Di Maio kicked the ball four kicks and his first job (steward at San Paolo) basically had to do with sport, Matteo Salvini played football as a boy, he is a great Milan fan, today he goes every now and then to run, except to stumble and post a self-deprecating photo with the brace on his arm, as he did three years ago. The risk is that when you are not trained: getting hurt. For information ask Giorgia Meloni who in January showed up at the Quirinale with crutches and justified herself: “I was trying to play sports …”.
Among the politicians of the past Massimo D’Alema was, but still is, a great passionate and expert of sailing, in more distant times the DC Arnaldo Forlani, unexpectedly, once said that he had played football as a semi-professional in the Vis Pesaro, Serie C category. . The good one was his brother, the honorable member had been added to the team as a promising youngster.
And abroad? Between present and past, there is no shortage of examples of sports politicians. Finnish Sanna Marin, the youngest premier in the world at 36, has practiced all sports, from volleyball to gymnastics. He canadese Justin Trudeau boxing, Nicolas Sarkozy is a bicycle lover and never misses the opportunity to measure himself over professional distances, Barak Obama has shown several times that he knows how to do with basketball, Vladimir Putin’s passion for martial arts is known, he prefers judo (but he also loves cycling and canoeing, badminton and is a good hockey player), the Englishman Davide Cameron, former prime minister in Downing Street, plays tennis discreetly, Prince Charles has performed several times at polo, Donald Trump limited himself to a less demanding sport, golf.
Among sportsmen who have chosen politics, everything is easier. Names, then: Valentina Vezzali, Iosefa Idem, Gianni Rivera, Manuela Di Centa, to stay in Italy. Broadening the horizon, it must be said that the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, he was a cricket champion and is included in the Hall Of Fame of this discipline, but the best of all, the most sporting politician of all by detachment, remains George Weah, (hotly contested) president of Liberia. AC Milan champion, Golden Ball in 1995: time will tell if he was better chasing a ball or behind an office desk.
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