Booing Riva in the Super Cup final: Gigi, forgive them for (not) knowing what they are doing

No man is so close to the truth as at the moment of death. Vasco Pratolini said this, whom no one remembers today, but in 1970 was considered by many to be the most important Italian novelist. A sentence that comments perfectly on the curious fate of Gigi Riva, whom everyone remembers today because in 1970 - after Cagliari's Scudetto and the World Cup in Mexico - he was undoubtedly the strongest Italian footballer.

Of another Italian football: closed borders after the defeat of England '66, all local talents on the field, so much (micro) capitalism in the stands, so much passion in the corners. None of us chooses the hour of our death, but Gigi Riva, by a curious twist of fate, leaves on 22 January 2024, the day of Napoli-Inter, the final of the first Italian Super Cup with a new four-team formula. A sheikh's show set in Riyadh, well paid by pertrodollars and with the stands full of spectators: the exact opposite of the football in which Gigi Riva played and built his myth, in short.

And, again by a curious twist of fate, it happens that the minute's silence dedicated to 'Rombo di Tuono', at the beginning of the second half, ends up being overwhelmed by whistles. Not that Gigi Riva, in his life, has never been booed: it happened, for example, at the return of the Azzurri national team from Mexico '70, after the 4-1 defeat in the final against Brazil of Pelé, something for which today - after two consecutive World Cup qualification failures - we would put our signature.

It is that these whistles are the perfect symbol of what our football has become. According to the version provided by the Lega Serie A, it was in fact the aforementioned Arab players who expressed their dissent, because the minute's silence is not part of the Arab culture and even the good old Beckenbauer, hero of that same football, suffered the same fate, on the occasion of the Spanish Super Cup played at the same latitudes.

Our football is a product in crisis and, as often happens to goods that no longer exert the appeal they once did, it ends up in the bargain bin. The trouble is that in this way not only Serie A is being sold off, but also its history, of which Riva was a fundamental chapter. So Gigi, forgive them for not knowing what they are doing. Indeed, they know very well: it is us who are terribly out of place in the era of the sheiks in the football. The rest of us twentieth-century boys.