This week my column is replaced by an open letter addressed to Zlatan Ibrahimovic
Dear Ibra,
I take the trouble to write to you from the milannews home page because I know that the echo will come to you and I know that someone will summarize the content for you. I made this choice after having witnessed, certainly not helpless because I trimmed tweet after tweet, the vulgar debate that took place, even bordering on racism, at the end of the Coppa Italia derby. Let’s start with you: you made a mistake, you made a lot of mistakes and you apologized at the end of the game to your associates as well as to the club and the coach and this, due to football habits, made up for your serious mistake. First point: there was no need for the public message (“in the world of Zlatan racism does not exist, we are all the same”) because whoever knows you and knows your ideas as well as your acquaintances, knows perfectly well. It can only happen in Italy, unfortunately, where the politically correct has become a sort of even more dangerous virus than covid-19, capable of infecting entire generations even of fans. As an old teammate of yours at the time, Hernan Crespo (“Ibra is a street footballer”) called you, the riot between you and Lukaku was worthy of a fight between bad boys playing soccer in a suburban field.
Now I come to the reason for the open letter. The most delicate and decisive period of the football season began on Tuesday night. In the previous weeks, everyone has appreciated with sympathy the exploits of Milan, accompanied them with bewitched judgments, no one expected from someone almost 40 years old, who would have affected so in Serie A, much less did they expect the primacy from someone like Pioli and from a team that at most was credited with a 5-6th place. Now that Milan’s primacy has begun to resist your absences, chain injuries, the youth of many of its members, giving away quality football, another climate has been born in the league. They started saying: eh no, these are not a bluff, these do not stop on the street as we thought, these are not a bubble. Hence first the controversy over penalties received in favor of expulsions and yellow that not even the Bassotti gang, then the provocations. Zapata was the first under the San Siro sky, De Roon the day after on social media, Lukaku will not be the last in Serie A. Milan has entered the crosshairs of the competition and above all of those who know very well that a spark is enough to give you fire. In the year of the championship with Allegri the same happened, you will surely remember it. And you skipped 3 turns. This time you don’t have to fall into the trap and not only because you are almost 40 years old but because your presence in the next cadences of the tournament will be decisive. On the contrary, I will tell you that the exit from the Italian Cup was not a bad deal. Two rounds with Juve between February 2 and 9 are not a health walk: they will lose energy, players and points in the league.
Since you returned to Italian football, the technical level has risen. So your responsibilities which were enormous, multiplied. You must expect not only fouls, thrusts and fierce contrasts that are part of the job, even subtle provocations. Falling into the trap would mean betraying the mission you gave yourself by returning to Milanello for the second time. Open your eyes, muzzle your street instincts, and focus only on football and the good things it has accomplished so far.
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