“The Super League is a wrong concept of growth. The economic recovery of football must go hand in hand with the social and ethical one”. The president of the FIGC, Gabriel Gravinawas one of the protagonists of the meeting “The (un)sustainable lightness of football” which was held on Wednesday 30 March at“La Sapienza” University of Rome. “Ours is an economic dimension that many read through a series of legitimate parameters: balance sheets, revenues, costs or losses – he added -, but football goes beyond the budget rule. It has a social impact”. For this reason Gravina was keen to speak to the students of “integral” sustainability economics on which “the federation has been working for some time”. The president of the Football Federation then specified how football impacts the country’s GDP by 0.58%. “Everything generates interest, but when the economic dimension grows, the social dimension must also grow. For example, we are delivering 24,000 national team clothing items to Ukraine for a value of 400,000”.
How many young Italians play soccer
In front of the young people who filled the “Ezio Tarantelli” room, the number one of the FIGC made it clear, through numbers, the social importance of football in Italy. “We have 1.4 million registered members, including 833,000 children between the ages of 5 and 16. That is 20 percent of Italian under 16s. This is why meetings like today’s are fundamental to the movement – he concluded after answering to the teacher’s questions Pasqualina Porrettawho coordinated the morning – to receive new life”.
Mancini: “Few Italians eligible for the national team, we’re in trouble”
At the opening of the event, applause, flashes and selfie requests for the coach of the national team, Robert Mancini. “I was lucky with football, I don’t know which Faculty I would have chosen if I had continued in my studies”, he said before specifying that “perseverance and passion are the elements necessary to emerge in any job one decides to do”. And before answering the question about the few Italians who can be called up for the Azzurri: “The problem has existed for many years, now it’s worse. We’re having trouble finding new talent. In today’s football, there’s no way to get them to express themselves, there’s no time they need to overcome the initial difficulties. You learn through mistakes, you can’t be perfect. Young people learn quickly, a little patience is enough. But in our world there is little of it because the result counts” . On the criteria for choosing the players, the coach explained that “technical qualities are obviously the first requisite. Afterwards, however, behavior and how you bond with your teammates also count. I chose this philosophy to draw up the squad list for the European. It paid off, it was our strength”.
The president of the Faculty of Economics, Fabrizio D’Ascenzothe journalists Alexander Judge e Mark Bellinazzo, Maurice Longhipresident of Bcc Rome, Ernesto Vetranomayor of Bcc Rome, Antonella Baldinopresident of the sports credit institute, ed Eugene Gaudio of the Rome Sapienza Foundation.
