In 2028 i Olympic Games they will have a little different look. Starting from The Angels, five more sports will be added. Three of these are not new to the Olympic world – baseball/softball, cricket, lacrosse – two others are absolute newcomers: the best-known squash and the flag football. If reading the last name was the only thought That? you are not entirely wrong. But keep an eye on the irony, because apparently we – the Italians, of course – are good too.
The rules of flag football
Let’s start from the basics. Flag football, in short, is non-contact American football. You play 5 on 5, you can’t steal the ball from the quarterback, you can’t jump if you’re not receiving the ball. Last but not least: players have two fluttering flags attached to their backsides (that’s why flag). Not for aesthetics, but because if an opponent steals one from you, you have lost possession.
What is flag football?
“To those who don’t know flag football, I say that it’s the most complete team sport I’ve ever seen,” he explains Andrea Gonnellageneral secretary of Italian Flag Football League, the body that has been organizing the national championships for 25 years. “Its peculiarity is that it is a much more mental game than it seems, because the lack of contact forces you to work on timing, on studying the opponent. It might be the least instinctive team sport there is. This is the big difference with classic football.”
The Italian national flag football team
So Italy is strong, we were saying. “We are among the top six in the world”, Gonnella is sure. It could also be a downward estimate, because a year ago we took the men’s silver medal (defeated only in the final by the United States) at World Games, that is, the Olympics of sports that are not admitted to the Olympics. In 2028 we are candidates to be in the group of the most fearsome, “i.e. USA, Mexico, Austria, Denmark, Germany and Italy”. Generational changes permitting, of course, but the expansion of sport in recent years could help: “Since the outbreak of Covid we have grown a lot. The teams, especially men’s, have increased year after year,” says the secretary.
Why will flag football be in the Olympics?
As with those photos of cars climbing trees that occasionally pop up on the internet, the question arises: how the hell did this sport that no one has ever heard of end up there, at the Olympics? First of all, because saying “no one” would be ungenerous towards people 20 million practitioners in 100 different countries.
Then, and this is more relevant, because theNFL (the US National Football League) invested a lot of money in it and even screened an advert in one of the most sought-after showcases of world sport – the commercial breaks of Super Bowl. This, in fact, may explain why its rugby relative (the tag rugby, which uses the same flags) is not in the running to enter the Games.
However, investments are not necessary solo to carry the flag at the Olympics – which is more difficult for the tackle, the classic variant, which requires long rest periods between one match and another. The NFL has realized that the more people play flag, the more American football players it will have in the long run.
The reason is that classic football now has a justified reputation as a game that is dangerous for the health of those who play it, with constant tackles and blows. Those in the head, above all, risk presenting a very high bill in old age, when practitioners risk being affected by cases of dementia.
The idea, therefore, is to intercept kids who would never have played football, for fear of the risks it brings with it, confident that they will migrate to tackle when they start thinking about professionalism. The flag, in fact, is already an excellent arena for training technical fundamentals such as catching and throwing. In the United States the project is already working: in 2021 the very young people who played flag were already 1.6 million more than those who played tackle.
The origins of flag football
Flag football was born exactly like this, “as a game for children who were introducing themselves to the sport for the first time”, says Gonnella. “Then the former players discovered that they could continue to have fun with the flags even after they retired. And in fact in Italy five of them founded the championship. Now it is liked more and more, even by those who are still in business. Our season, not surprisingly, is right in the middle of the calendar regular season senior and youth football. And the players, when they discover the sport, ultimately prefer to play in our league.” The Italian League today has 92 teams, six championships and 736 players.
