Super Bowl, Seahawks beat Patriots (and Trump lashes out at Bad Bunny)

Italia-United States, parallel destinies. It has been said a thousand times, for example, that Sanremo is Italy's SuperBowl, in the sense of the most anticipated and important television event on the annual schedule. And so, while here at home Giorgia Meloni's government monopolises the political debate with the case of the withdrawal of the area comedian Andrea Pucci from the next Italian Song Festival, Donald Trump continues to polemicise against the participation of the Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny as singing guest at the game that decides the American football season. So much for Ice's violence, tariffs and not always consistent international relations. But nowadays politics, before votes, goes for social likes.

Let's start with the playing field, however. In a match with no history, the Seattle Seahawks dominated the Super Bowl LX by smashing the New England Patriots 29 to 13, yet the moral winner of the American football final was the Grammy-winning rapper Bad Bunny, who launched a message of unity to the country from Levi's Stadium: 'Together we are America, the only thing more powerful than hate is love'. Political controversy was inevitable, with 'The Donald' thundering on his own social media site Truth: 'That was the ugliest show ever, a slap in the face to America. No one understands a word this guy says and the dancing is disgusting, especially for children."

Reduced from three Grammy wins last Sunday including the one for Best Album, Bad Bunny, the Debi Tirar Mas Fotos superstar who had interrupted his US tour last year so as not to expose his fans to Ice threats, brought a taste of his 'Casita Rosa' to the stage. Only Trump could take offence, as he had announced on the eve of the tour. The occupant of the White House stayed at Mar-a-Lago, having chosen to defect from the Super Bowl 'because of the distance' from the West Coast but also because of the Nfl's choice to assign the half-time show to an American citizen who sings only in Spanish.

Trump had said that he would stream the pro-Maga concert by area rocker Kid Rock put on by Charlie Kirk's organisation, Turning Point USA: a medley of "old but goldies" and country music that ended with an appeal to the audience to dedicate their lives to Jesus.

For the US, the Super Bowl represents a great secular holiday that, like Thanksgiving, is supposed to unite a divided country. In giving the pulse of his 'state of the union', the Puerto Rican Bad Bunny recreated a veritable village at the stadium populated by stars like Lady Gaga, Ricky Martin, Cardi B, Pedro Pascal and Jessica Alba, but also people from real life, a Los Angeles taqueria and, from Brooklyn, one of the last remaining Puerto Rican social clubs in New York. There was also a child to whom former supermarket cashier Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio gave the golden Grammy gramophone: to many he evoked little Liam Ramos, deported from Minnesota to Texas, a drama that has moved half of America in recent weeks.