The land of quibbles; the land of bells; my kingdom for a quibble; the Azzeccagarbugli; Byzantinism (this is getting a bit high-flown, ed.); out the door and back in through the window; the great circus of Italian football; not even
VAR; the conspiracy; ‘ridiculous’ is a compliment; lost in a farce; a grotesque affair; in Italy, the shortest route from one point to another is a convoluted detour (this is really reaching, ed.); an unworthy mess; it’s paranormal.
It was a golden opportunity, even for a country that is the reigning world champion of formal pretences and procedural flaws, of formalities and pieces that never quite fit together, be they mosaics or political parties. The land of interim arrangements and extensions. True to form, a veritable Rio Carnival of clichés erupted—the grand ball of stock phrases and the resort to thesauruses of synonyms and antonyms to describe the same event in a hundred different ways: a circus act (oops, we had not included that one in the list). The event that set words and keyboards alight is easy to summarise yet difficult to explain: the ousting, via a vote of no confidence by the CONI executive committee, of Giovanni Malagò from his role as president of the Italian Football Federation (in future, perhaps better known as the ‘Game of the Goose’), which was consequently placed under special administration, and his immediate return (that is, Malagò’s own return) to the very same position, but this time as special administrator of the same Federation. It is all true, even if it does not seem so. We will not dwell on the reasons; you already know them.
However, Malagò had been elected against the wishes of a minority within the football world and the political majority – in short, the Minister for Sport, Andrea Abodi; his former friend and successor as CONI president, Luciano Buonfiglio, initially spoke favourably of him, but then turned against him. Lawyer Renato Miele (the sort who now says, ‘So let’s not complain if our 14- or 15-year-old children take the law into their own hands with knives’ – oh dear) has come up with the solution to get him sacked: Malagò did not hold a FIGC membership card (‘Do you know that I’ve lost two children? – ‘Madam, you’re a rather absent-minded woman’ is the only famous quote that springs to mind to condemn Malagò’s behaviour). Meanwhile, Malagò has alienated many by dismissing Maldini and Leonardo over the (purely technical) fiasco involving Pirlo and for recalling Roberto Mancini, the man who’d fled to Saudi Arabia for a few million. However, Mancini subsequently won three out of four matches, reasserted his status as the undisputed leader of the national team, and even safeguarded Malagò’s position: who would now consider dismissing either of them? The result was the astonishing charade of reinstating the ousted official, so that no one would be harmed—neither the FIGC, which wished to maintain the status quo, nor the CONI, which sought to overturn it. No one, that is, apart from poor Abodi.
All the clichés used to explain the inexplicable land of Acchiappacitrulli are fine, but ultimately they fail to capture the magic – indeed, the epiphany – of this day in early October, when the president appointed himself as commissioner. To explain this magic, we need another, more philosophical concept: the eternal return of the identical. It applies to Italy, which will never change; it applies to the indestructible Malagò, now a replica of himself. And it applies to Mancio, who has returned from whence he fled, saved by his mentor, and who in turn saved his mentor. So that everything might return to being exactly the same and serene, like the River Aniene.
