In a few months, the Football World Cup will begin, and I feel the need to express many reservations about this edition, going so far as to criticise its very staging, which has been caused by a speculative strategy.
I have no ethical issues with speculative exercises or activities, but I do have a cultural and social objection to the dismantling of social and popular phenomena that maintain a healthy balance among people.
Indeed, they are social “shock absorbers,” balancing instruments, or even systems for storing anger, and therefore generators of peace. Football was the game of the poor, one that could be played anywhere and by everyone, without buying anything.
It was a natural calling the moment they saw the first ball, assuming it wasn't a tin can or a rag.
We come to why I will not be with Curaçao.
Meanwhile, it's not a likeable team, as one might define the poorer sides that represent emerging nations or those consistently inferior to the giants.
Curaçao only has 150,000 inhabitants, a little more than Latina, my city, which at most has seen Vincenzo D’Amico born among Serie A footballers from 1932 to today, but who has never played for the national team. Just like other footballers born in this provincial capital from 1932 to today.
How, instead, does Curaçao manage to put together a World Cup squad? Simple, they've called up a good number of Dutch players from the Eredivisie and given them nationality, making them play against Caribbean opponents.
As if France were sending a B-team to wear the colours of Monaco, or Spain those of Andorra, and Italy those of San Marino. No, that last example is wrong, in Italy we can't even manage a decent starting line-up.
Furthermore, Monaco and Andorra would face qualification in a group with all the small European states without additions.
In addition to this reason, which I believe is valid for not making them likeable heroes, I offer you another, more seriously promoted by many industry professionals.
The qualifying groups can no longer be on a continental basis, making for “stiff” selection in Europe and South America, thus leaving at home states with significantly superior quality and potential to Caribbean, African, or Australian nations.
Among the European teams, I wouldn't include Italy's case, which deserves to stay at Coverciano and work.
Attention, do you know what one of the biggest problems in Italian football is? In Italy, families pay for their children to play football; those who pay aren't desperate and those who pay have the right to play.
Let's go back to investing in orators; they were the true nurseries. Rampant secularism has also taken the World Cups away from us.
Instead, let's return to the flaws of world football that have affected Curaçao. I don't like the VAR and all the new rules either; they are television artifices for a sport that lives for the 90% outside the television circuits. We are losing the naturalness of football, which would be one of the strengths and wonders of this game. Television's spectacular demands mortify the spectacle of football.
These changes are popular with baseball fans, like the citizens of Curaçao or Americans.
A World Cup, therefore, cannot be organised across a territory as vast as that which overlaps the geographical areas of Canada, the USA and Mexico.
The USA ’94 and Japan & Korea ’02 tournaments already showed that travelling between areas with different climates and over long distances influenced the results.
Is there anything else to say that I'm not with Curaçao and all the fathers of this phenomenon?
