Atalanta, a club based in Bergamo, had just won its second title in history, neither more nor less than a Europa League final, neither more nor less than against the undefeated Bundesliga winner, Bayer Leverkusen, nor neither more nor less than the second title in its history after an Italian Cup won in the 1962-1963 season, neither more nor less than after losing for the fifth time an Italian Cup final against the former aircraft carrier Juventus. Come on, a moment of maximum euphoria, one of those in which you lose direction, your references, and you simply let yourself be carried away by happiness, when your coach, the wise Gian Piero Gasperini, appeared at the microphones eager for happiness. to remember, honor, dedicate this enormous triumph to the victims of covid. Yes, well, the reference would seem typical of a person sensitive to the social reality that surrounds him, someone connected with what life leads despite living in the football bubble, someone who knows, perhaps his broad and wise gray hairs let you know, that today is closely linked to yesterday even though everything is going so fast, much more so if they apply the speed corrector of football, so that we forget where we come from to ignore where we are going.
Because if you type, I did this morning, Atalanta, Bergamo, covid, you will see that the Italian city and a Champions League match played against Valencia is associated with those moments of explosion of that and then we did not know what it was, we had fear of that which floated in the air and at times we thought it would make us come out wiser, stronger.
Yes, Gasperini reminded us that life is not like one of those games in which once you pass a screen you do not return to that past, but rather it is a film in which all the frames, well, almost all, have a meaning, a connection, perhaps a why, and that in happiness it was necessary to remember all those affected, all the deceased, of that city that was considered and titled as ground zero of the pandemic in Europe. If football, its capacity for association and convocation, had been considered the beginning of evils, we had to take advantage of the moment of happiness and smile to remember everyone, all of them, who left us in those times of darkness and darkness. .
And that makes me think about that concept that we usually handle with excessive ease and that has to do with being a large team. Yes, it is true and fair to associate it with their achievements, with the cups that their trophy room contains, with the followers and subscribers they have associated with them, even with the tourists who visit their museum, the selfies they take every day and the sales of their stores and their t-shirts. But it is just as fair and great to associate it with the connection with its people, those who are close, close, perhaps distant in distance but close in heart and who feel intimately represented in pain and joy, in the final five previously lost as on a magical Dublin night. In the ability to represent the disadvantaged and know how to pay tribute to those in pain, to those who were left behind, to those who today there are those who think are an outdated and amortized screen and to whom Gasperini, representing his entire club, honored, remembered and it brought, hopefully, a little light and joy.
Yes, they want me to tell you, there are days and nights when football is useful for something, for something that is neither an income statement nor an economic balance sheet nor an algorithm. Something that simply connects you with life.
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