Balotelli and racism in the corners: because Italian football needs SuperMario

A ball to racism. He knows a little rhetoric, but this time it's not a metaphor: Balotelli he just kicked the ball against the corner of the Verona. The usual curve of Hellas, the one known for his sympathies of the right, which in the mid-nineties hung a black mannequin hanged from the stands to protest against the purchase of the Dutch Ferrier and a couple of decades later still does not lose the opportunity to make choirs and howls against black opponents. It had already happened at the beginning of the season with Kessie, it happened again with Balotelli. And no, it is not a question of "being dazed by the decibels of the Gialloblu typhus" (as the company had commented), nor of an "ironic curve", as the president Setti defines it. It's just racism: i "buuu", The insults, they have taken back the cameras, they have also heard them federal inspectors, Balotelli did not invent them. The decision of the week will arrive sports judge, in Italy it will be talked about for a long time, with the usual sentences. But the real question is: it would have been the same if he hadn't stopped, threatening to get out of the field, and he hadn't thrown that ball into the curve?

Italian football is racist. It is a consideration that could perhaps be extended even outside the football, but this is not the place to do it. We certainly do not discover it today, the problem is that too often we forget it, almost addicted to the episodes that occur every Sunday and in many cases go unnoticed, archived as incidents. There have been since the start of the championship eleven cases of racism / discrimination in Serie A. This is only to want to take into consideration those officially registered, leaving out all the others that do not end up in the reports because they are not heard (or someone pretends not to hear them). It is an average of one every two Sundays, even more. Practically an emergency. But who remembers them, who punishes them?

TO Brescia (racial insults against Pjanic) there was the curve closure for one shift, moreover suspended by the conditional. TO Bergamo the bad story of the choirs against Dalbert, for which the match had also been suspended, was resolved with a buffet of 10 thousand euros to Atalanta. In other cases, like Lukaku to Cagliari, none sanction. Now there FIGC driven by Gabriele Gravina has changed the rule on objective liability, who left the clubs under the blackmail of the ultras: if the companies will adopt the specific protocols exonerations and extenuating circumstances will be recognized and therefore they will no longer be punished (or less so). A shareable provision, the solution is identify the culprits and throw them out of the stadiums, but in the meantime it risks contributing to lowering the attention on the subject. Ten days ago, for example, racist choirs had targeted Vieira during Sampdoria-Roma: the prosecutor has taken the time to "calibrate the responsibility of society" in the light of the new rules, it is possible that the story falls on deaf ears. And end up in oblivion.

Of Verona instead we will remember. Thanks to Balotelli e to his ball. As we remember a year later Inter-Napoli and expulsion of Koulibaly, an episode as there are many, yet it became an example. To shake us from the ordinariness of racism in the ball we need blatant gestures, which not everyone has the courage, personality or shoulders wide enough to do.

We need (also) Balotelli. It's his curse a little: always be treated by symbol and never as a simple footballer, as it should be considered. It will happen again this time, for its umpteenth return, so far more media-oriented than football-related. A few skipped games, a precarious condition, only two goals scored, the one of yesterday beautiful but useless for his Brescia last in the standings. In his city they were waiting for him as the savior for his country, the A league he re-embraced him, hoping to find a man great champion (and maybe the attacker of the National to the next Europeans). None of this, at least for now the Balotelli III is rather disappointing. But still important: welcome back to "Super Mario", Italian football still needs you. Not just as a footballer.

Twitter: @lVendemiale

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