«It all seems true, thanks Mr. Santini»

CORRIDONIA – It’s certainly not the basketball city you expect, Corridonia. The basketball tradition in the city is certainly not rooted, there isn’t even a club to hold the city’s banner high. Yet one of the greatest champions of recent world basketball would have Corridonian genes: the Argentine Emanuel Ginobili. The story, published last December in the Corriere Adriatico, was launched by the sociologist Fiorenzo Santini, who is reconstructing the roots of various Argentine sports champions, whose ancestors are often linked to the Marche region.

Santini discovered that a great-great-grandfather of the former NBA star had left for South America from what was then Pausula, not from Massa Fermana as had been believed for a long time. The article went around the web and for that complex and often ungovernable tam tam mechanism it must have arrived directly on the smartphone of the great Manu, now retired but in the past an icon of San Antonio Spurs, Argentina and before that also of Virtus Bologna and Viola Reggio Calabria. In fact, the same shared it yesterday on his Twitter profile, accompanying it with a comment that immediately ignited the fantasies of fans: first an Italian flag, then the words «It all seems true. Now I would like the continuation! Thank you Mr. Santini». Comments and sharing abounded, among those who dreamed that this discovery had been made 25 years ago in order to have him in the national team and those who laugh at thinking of a city, Corridonia, “where there isn’t even a public basket”. But the issue is being followed closely and with absolute seriousness also by the municipal administration, which has maintained a direct line with Santini in recent months to deepen his studies. The confirmation comes from the councilor for sport Matteo Grassetti. «Ginobili’s tweet was certainly a nice surprise and a confirmation of the work carried out by Santini – says Grassetti -. On our part, there is the will to confer honorary citizenship on the champion, soon we will do it officially with an act of council. But we would also like to establish relations with his family and possibly with the descendants still present here in the area: it would be a dream to have him as a guest in Corridonia”. On the other hand, there would already be a hook: Juan Carlos Paglialunga, president of the Marches association of Bahia Blanca, the city where Ginobili was born and raised, is a close friend of his brother, so it is not entirely far-fetched to think of being able to bring Manu to the Marches. Marche where he played as an opponent at the beginning of his career, which saw him play in Italy from 1998 to 2002: Jesi, Fabriano but above all Pesaro the cities he touched in a career which however saw its peaks in America. His palmares, to stay only with the most prestigious results, speaks of four NBA titles with the San Antonio Spurs, a Euroleague, a Scudetto and two Italian Cups in Bologna and then an Olympic gold and bronze and a world silver with the national team argentina. Retired in 2018, in 2019 the Spurs retired his number 20 shirt, hanging it from the ceiling of the At&t Center: it would be suggestive to have one also hung in Piazza del Popolo.