Bosnia or no Bosnia, what a struggle our football is!

And the great thing is that in all this, apart from the unbearable hype, there is some truth, since the last two eliminations, against Sweden (2017) and North Macedonia (2022), we experienced them as humiliating tragedies that still wake us up at night. Always with the same inexorable plot: Italia attacking with leaden legs and head, the others not letting us score, and in the final they stick it to us amid the Azzurri's tears of despair.

What if we stopped with this bayonet assault rhetoric? With the references to Caporetto and other famous military defeats? What if we took it a little more lightly, that after all, there are worse things in life? Last time there was even talk of an apocalypse (inadvisable with these winds of war), and that it was unthinkable that a national team that had won four World Cup titles and two European Championships could end up in this abyss. The same psychodrama as when at San Siro, after a good first half, we lost 4-1 to Norway. And everyone repeating, like a recorded tape, that we can't go on like this, that by now in Serie A almost everyone is a foreigner, that the Federcalcio and the Lega do nothing to support the national team, that we are bringing up teenagers orphaned by the world summers.

Perhaps instead it is we, no longer first-timers, who feel like orphans. And so we started again with the trite amarcord on the triumph of Spain '82, on Paolo Rossi's three goals against Brazil; and Pertini's pipe, the people in the streets mad with joy. And then 'The sky over Berlin' in 2006, Grosso's penalty, Pirlo's surgical throws, Del Piero's inventions, Buffon's saves.

All very nice because all of us, who are of a certain age, remember where we were and who we were with in those World Cup summers. The empty streets that fill up after the victory, the best friends, those we met in the street, that childlike joy that in life, when cheering does not become an obsession, serves to dilute much more serious problems. Of course, we are still talking about football, but these are emotions that leave their mark, which we now see reproduced, on a smaller scale, for Sinner in tennis, for Antonelli in Formula 1, or in the Olympic victories of our Azzurri.

In fact, it seems as if, by a mocking contrapasso, the better we become at other disciplines, at skiing, athletics, volleyball, swimming, the poorer we become at what used to be the national sport. As if the old magic had worn off, as if we no longer enjoyed the game. You can also feel it in the interviews: when these boys and girls who triumph in the other sports, which we once called minor, speak, it is a pleasure to hear them. They excite you, there is life. There are always good stories behind them, stories of sacrifice, of will, of families that have bent over backwards. Instead, when we hear footballers, with those stereotypical phrases, it is a sadness, a grey list of banalities. It becomes difficult for players like that to become role models, symbols for other young people. Never an original word, never a stance on any event. What are they afraid of? What do they fear?

So, whatever happens tomorrow night with Bosnia, the problem is that our football hasn't been right for a while. More in the head than in the feet. We say that the national team is important and then didn't even get an internship in the four-month break. We are clinging to old memories, but the reality is that poor Gattuso has to jump through hoops to put together a group of players who are not only good but also have strong motivation. To achieve this, good Rino had to go to dinner with everyone since he couldn't see them in the rallies. And then the visits, the phone calls, the personal chats to boost their self-esteem. Soon, to comfort them, he will switch off the light and give them the stress-relief teddy bear. Because these players, who also earn millions, also have a self-esteem problem. These fragilities reduce their performance, increase their anxiety, and block their creativity.

Maybe we will be able to beat this Bosnia, which already scares us. However, the other real mission will be to regenerate this increasingly modest and saddened football. That will be tough. Will we succeed?