Italy has surpassed Spain in the UEFA ranking. Another of those classifications without which we could continue sleeping soundly. But it is interesting to see how Serie A has slowly risen from its fall to hell after having been the best league in the world (glorious 90s), to become today a relatively equal, fun championship in which the control of the spending has prevailed above the dreams and delusions of the big businessmen who sank it before the big party hit. The Cragnotti, Berlusconi or Moratti who fled or sold the clubs after buying all the stars they could fit in the firmament. Today there is no trace of a Batistuta, a Totti, something similar to Kaká or a scorer with the class and effectiveness of Van Basten or Weah. And it doesn’t matter. Inter won this season, last year Naples won and the next one may be Milan. Next season, for the first time, Serie A will have five teams in the Champions League.
The fun, in the absence of more resources, now happens on the benches, where an important renewal is confirmed. Juventus has just fired Massimiliano Allegri with the highly founded argument of violent behavior and out of any scheme of elegance of the Old Signora at the end of the last Italian Cup final against Atalanta (he even attacked his sports director). It doesn’t matter, it was just an excuse to make the leap to a new generation of technicians. Daniele De Rossi at Roma, where he arrived mid-season to replace Mourinho, has done a great job (despite the Portuguese’s widows attacking him from time to time). There are also Cannavaro, in Udinese, and Thiago Motta in Bologna, who worked the miracle, placing the team third, ahead of Juventus, with an aggressive and effective game with which he won a signing for the Turin team. The big attraction next year, however, will be a guy from Arenys de Mar who, who would have thought it the day we saw him sing Van Gogh’s ear on Samantha Villar’s show, she has a hell of a character and is revolutionizing a small town in northern Italy on the shores of one of the most beautiful lakes in the world.
Cesc Fàbregas is 37 years old and does not even have the definitive coaching card, but he is already the new sensation in Italy. And not only because of what he has done at Como 1907, where he arrived as a player to play the last minutes of his career in the Italian Serie B, but because of how he has achieved it. The videos of his loud speeches are viral poison on social networks. Also the one about his celebration in the locker room after winning promotion against Venezia, when he announced that he was going to pay for a trip to Ibiza for the entire squad, just as he had promised them if they achieved the goal. A feat that the team had not achieved for 21 years and whose merit falls enormously on the midfielder raised in La Masia.
Cesc and Thierry Henry, old teammates in that wonderful Arsenal that earned almost nothing, are shareholders of the Lombard team, whose majority ownership is lThe brothers Michael and Robert Hartono. The official coach is Welsh Osian Roberts, a mere formality to get around the problem of Fàbregas’ license. And he’s funny, because Cesc was always a precocious talent who had to find a life outside the home because there was a certain Xavi in his house who blocked his projection. As if history were repeating itself, Cesc is now triumphing on the shores of a lake and at the foot of the Alps, as is Motta, another culé midfielder, who is also preparing to do so, while at home they long for someone to put order in the locker room.
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