Many will not know it at all, some may have forgotten it but there was a day, exactly thirty years ago, in which Pontedera beat the Italian national football team led by the then selector Arrigo Sacchi, the prophet of Fusignano, the national team which would then go all the way to the United States World Cup, only beaten on penalties by Brazil in the final. The victory of the Granata on the Coverciano pitch obviously caused a sensation at the time, the headlines in the sports newspapers were not lacking as was the criticism of the leadership of Arrigo Sacchi who has always divided public opinion with his belief that the schemes had dominance over individual players.
Today in Pontedera, to commemorate the event, during the interval of the match the architects of that feat are rewarded: a commemorative plaque for everyone, from the then Tuscan coach to the president and every single player. A beautiful reunion and a great initiative the likes of which we rarely see on our football fields. Nowadays, especially in the top flight, there is no shortage of matches in which the teams do not enter the pitch with a banner for this or that association or to bring a social problem to light; honor the gesture and the kind thought but this continuous overexposure does nothing but normalize the events within an obvious routine, with the immediate consequence that no one now pays attention to what the banner says, weakening – and by a long way – albeit a laudable proposal.
What kills football is repetitiveness. An intriguing AC Milan – Roma match will be played this week Europa Leaguea competition relegated almost to the margins in favor of the more noble one Champions League. The challenge between two Italian teams on the European field, both in good form, certainly attracts football fans, much more than a cartel match Champions. The introduction of the much-maligned Super alloy it may be an immediate cure-all but in a medium-long term project the cyclical nature of some challenges risks making them seem like a normal championship match, instead of giving it that aura of a great occasion to be followed at all costs, at the stadium or on television screens for the less daring.
A much less noble challenge compared to the European panorama is the one being played this afternoon at the Mannucci of Pontedera, a day characterized by sunshine and a typically summer temperature that has little to do with the beginning of April. Ancona, who are on the edge of the play-out zone in the standings, are coming to visit the Granata, so I wouldn’t have expected a large presence of fans. Once I entered the stadium, I immediately had to change my mind, a good number of fans came from the Marche, the ultras of the North Curve they go to occupy a segment of the host sector and cover it with rags and banners. If the numerical aspect is not to be disdained, the vocal support is perhaps even better, in fact for the entire duration of the match those present alternate dry chants with more prolonged ones but I don’t remember a single moment of silence. Only during the interval of the match is there breaking of lines, for the rest the support for the team starts from the beginning of the match and arrives with the same intensity until the referee’s final whistle. Even the aesthetics leave nothing to be desired: a couple of flags fly at the edges of the group while the double-pole flags rise at various moments of the match. The people of Ancona without inventing anything new manage to cheer great, as you wouldn’t expect from a fan base whose team is struggling in the slums. Maybe I had few expectations for the match in question but the people from the Marche confirm themselves as seasoned fans, an afternoon where they expose the fundamentals of being a fan or an ultra, whatever you want: presence, color and vocal support, what more could you ask for?
The owners of the house instead find themselves in the north steps, the den of the Granata fans, clapping and chanting accompany the match, perhaps numerically something more could be done, but cheering in a town is never too easy. Just to take a leap into the past, at the time of the victory against Sacchi’s national team, we’re talking about the mid-nineties, Pontedera had a pretty good following: those were years where in Tuscany, but also in the rest of Italy, every town, every fraction, had its following of ultras, often with interesting numbers. Then there was the sudden decline, the disaffection, the flight from the stadiums. The reasons are many and drawing up a ranking among them becomes a difficult task. It is certainly not possible to think and state with certainty that violence is the cause of this desertification of football stadiums, those who have white hair and a few years on their shoulders cannot fail to remember that in the eighties, in the curves and even in the streets, it was of all things, the level of violence was well above what was permitted, even if everything (or almost everything) was classified as skirmishes between fans. Today we are indignant at a player who waves an irreverent flag at his opponent after a derby win: let’s also say that on the way to the politically correct we’ve done too much, we just need to find an excuse to make the news, often with a negative meaning. Because this is what interests public opinion, to scandalize even when there is no reason.
Valerio Poli
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2024-04-11 17:00:20
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