Tag Archive for 'superstizione'

Book review: Calcio magico

Francesco Fasiolo

Calcio magico. Oracoli, rituali e scaramanzie: il paradosso dell’irrazionale nel pallone

Ultra Sport, 2022

 

 

Il tema, assolutamente inedito nel panorama editoriale sportivo/calcistico, era troppo accattivante per non parlarne. “Calcio magico” infatti parte da una considerazione tanto vera quanto illogica: in un calcio fatto, oggi come oggi, da regole di finanza, economia, tecnologia e chi più ne ha più ne metta, la scaramanzia, la superstizione, i riti propiziatori di ancestrale memoria restano comunque protagonisti alla pari di tutti gli altri fattori. Il lavoro di Fasiolo, giornalista di Repubblica, si alterna tra Europa e Sudamerica tra aneddoti gustosi e oracoli bizzarri alla ricerca del perché nel calcio ci si appelli anche, se non soprattutto, a bizzarrie simili sulla falsariga dell’italico “non è vero ma ci credo” .

Cosa c’entrano con questo mondo i maghi, gli animali indovini, gli atti di fede, i numeri sfortunati, i rimedi anti-iella, le maledizioni e i vestiti portafortuna? C’entrano eccome, perché l’irrazionale spunta da ogni angolo di questo articolato meccanismo. Ce lo ricordano il rituale degli Azzurri campioni di Europa nel 2021 (Vialli “dimenticato” sul pullman prima di ogni match) e quello della Francia campione del mondo nel ’98 (il bacio propiziatorio sulla testa di Barthez), le previsioni pubbliche del polpo Paul, infallibile oracolo degli Europei del 2008 e dei Mondiali del 2010, gli incredibili riti prepartita di campioni internazionali e le avversioni di tanti presidenti per i numeri 13 e 17. “Calcio magico” si occupa delle superstizioni “interne al sistema”, quelle dei protagonisti dello show: calciatori, allenatori e club. Una casistica variegata e curiosa, che spinge a interrogarsi sul fenomeno con un approccio antropologico: questo abbandonarsi all’illogico è una sorta di resistenza alle ragioni della modernità?

Why the football manager don’t talk scudetto? Is it a superstition mindset?

Coaches do not like to talk about the Scudetto, they may let it be understood that this is the objective, but immediately afterwards they deny this interpretation with jokes or by shifting the attention to the present and, therefore, to the next match. Sport, in this case soccer, is an activity in which one experiences strong emotions, which must be controlled by smoothing out overly enthusiastic expectations, to avoid them becoming an unsustainable burden for the team. It is no coincidence that the recent matches of the teams that lead the league, Napoli, Inter and Milan, are there to prove it. As soon as they realized that they could take advantage of their opponents, a series of draws arrived that have kept the situation tied. With the exception of Lazio-Napoli, in the other matches, including the previous rounds, the team played with great commitment, but not to lose, certainly not to win.

For teams that have not won the championship for a long time, expectations are the killer of winning performances. Because they easily become a multiplier of anxiety generated by the idea of having to win at all costs. This approach, if not managed effectively leads more easily to lose this opportunity. In other words, if the coach started talking openly about the Scudetto, he would create a state of tension in the team, so that it is better to have only the objective of playing the next game. Moreover, there is another benefit related to this way of thinking: you do not risk being disappointed in a deep way. Losing a game is unpleasant, but the next one allows you to erase this mood right away. If you lose the championship, after dreaming about it, you risk falling into depression and developing a negative idea of the team.

As a result, coaches must work to control their own irrationality and that of the team, understanding that in order to win, it is necessary to stay within every single game and nothing more, so that everything remains limited to 90 minutes. In other teams, instead, since the beginning of the championship you can push the accelerator on the final goal: “Let’s win every game so we’ll win the Scudetto”. This latter philosophy is the usual condition of teams that are used to winning and for whom the objective of their participation in a tournament or championship is to win it. Giampiero Boniperti, president of Juventus, used to say this back in the 1970s: “Winning is the only thing that counts”. We should teach teams and individual players to be happy to live such exciting situations as those faced by those who fight for a great result, the Scudetto. We would have less irrational and superstitious behaviors and we would play with the awareness that by taking risks and showing an exceptional motivation we can reach ambitious goals.