“Yesterday in Berlin the jersey of the four-time World Champion and two-time European Champion national team was dishonoured. Not because losing to Switzerland is dishonourable in itself (they proved to be stronger than us); it is the manner and the circumstances that make everything unseemly”. This is how the editorial begins Guido Vaciagodirector of Tuttosport, on the pages of today’s edition of the newspaper. The journalist focuses on the various problems of Italian football, as well as on Italy’s terrible performance last night:
“Going home against Switzerland, without ever having entered the match, is the finger pointing to the (black) moon of our football system, incapable of producing talent and quality. A system that has failed to send the senior national team to the last two World Cups, which has not made it past the group stage of the World Cup since 2006, which does not reform itself except in small pieces and very slowly, which focuses on false problems, which is extremely contentious and which too often screws itself tightly to maintaining the personal power instead of planning the good of the movement.
And the fact that politics, and in particular those who govern, are starting to hover threateningly over the centers of football power, starting with the FIGC, has an unseemly component of media jackalism (today picking on Gravina is a penalty in an empty net), but at the same time it is also true that the Italian football system has done too little to avoid finding itself in these attackable conditions. Above all, it has stopped producing talent and has never asked itself why”.