Football will sort itself out – luckily for you

Let me begin by acknowledging Luis Figo, who effectively delivered a rebuke to Infantino by calling, in the Daily Mail, for the FIFA president’s immediate resignation as the only possible move to ‘save football’. Now, when I hear such definitive statements as this, I reach for the bottle (empty, so I can use it as a blunt weapon), but I can’t help feeling a twinge of sympathy for the former Portuguese champion, well aware that there’s no end to the worst, that after Infantino, Putin might very well take that role, and that nobody is going to save football because, fortunately, it saves itself despite everything. I wouldn’t know how else to explain the fact that in Italy you continue to delude yourselves into thinking you play the same sport as in England – to name a random country, of course – whilst for years you’ve been running a transfer market for cast-offs, a sort of flea market made up of washed-up former stars looking for one last contract just to stave off retirement, promising youngsters who rarely live up to expectations, and surplus players whom not even Urbano Cairo would take on loan with an option to buy. And don’t go telling me that Juventus beat Chelsea in a friendly yesterday, because I’ll go and find the shards of that bottle I mentioned earlier and gouge out my own eyes rather than read such obscenities.

In our environment, we have never indulged in reckless spending, nor do we get worked up about bottomless funds or oil-rich sheikhs, but it is disheartening to see Serie A having to scrape together the last few pennies from the bottom of its pockets to try and sign a Palestra or a Summerville, only to have them snatched away by unbeatable offers. Someone should invent a time machine just to send those who complain about sky-high prices and the money that now decides everything in modern football back a few decades; they’d find the same complaints and the same outrage in every era of this sport’s history. The fact is, you’re no longer the rich ones, and with two weeks to go before the start of the league season, you’re wondering whether the transfer window’s big signing is an English defender more worn out than my balls – whilst The Guardian opens its sports page with the Women’s Tour de France – or a Portuguese player who was a substitute in France (with poor Modrić forced to praise him at a press conference because one of his goals knocked Croatia out of the World Cup). Unless this is all just a ploy ahead of Euro 2032: as you’re co-hosting it with Turkey, you’re doing everything you can (including the stadium issue) to turn the transfer market into a souk and Serie A into the ‘Süper Lig of the Boot’. Well, you’re certainly succeeding brilliantly.