Federico Spalletti, son of mister Luciano, wrote a long letter in the hours following the great championship party of the Napoli on Sunday at Maradona stadium, celebrating the exploits of his father who, having graduated as Italian champion this year with the Azzurri, is at his first important career title in Italy.
“It's strange because the children of other coaches that I've known don't feel the games of their loved ones as we do, perhaps because I've been in Tuscany and followed my dad dreaming of going as far away as possible, but in that hinterland the family grips you even in the most intimate moments, light years away, Federico in the middle – he writes -. I have always experienced the Scudetto with annoyance, fatigue, anxiety, feelings that sometimes turned into hatred, forced to talk about it and hear about it, now convinced that my father would never win it".
“A belief that grew from watching him work both in Tuscany and on the pitch, Luciano Spalletti the “bricklayer of football”, a career that was not victorious (in Italy, we must not forget the scudettos in Russia of which no one has truly managed to understand the stature) but still glorious, also because it suited a country workaholic who was paving the way for future successes for which he never took due credit, an eternal rich-poor: this in my head is the reason to see my father without a scudetto with serenity”.
“I had become accustomed to the superficial rhetoric of the loser, because if it is true that in football winning is the only thing that matters, reaching a goal, whether personal or set by the club, can only be a victory, which therefore acquires a relative value. Hearing the stories of my grandmother who told where my father came from and seeing where he had arrived, I was serenely convinced that he was a winner, in the stereotypical sense of the term”.
“Finally, you are all forced to consider him as such, there is no argument that holds and this is what I am most proud of, that the world can see Spalletti the worker with my same eyes, even if for different reasons, even if it doesn't want to: if it was poetry not to win in Italy for the reasons mentioned above, imagine finally doing it in a rich-poor square just like you.
I am not happy, I am calm: dad, I am proud of you and when it comes to work I have always defended you tooth and nail, guarantee me the possibility of feeling part of all this. Signed, a loser”.
Article published on 7 June 2023 - 13:20
