Renzi attacks Salvini: "He compares Guardiola to a cucumber. Removing him from government is a moral duty."

Matteo Renzi and Matteo Salvini are embroiled in a long-distance clash following the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Transport's remarks at the League's Youth Festival. The Italia Viva leader is taking aim at his comments directed at Pep Guardiola, one of international football's most successful coaches.

"At the League's youth party, Matteo Salvini, supposedly Minister of Transport, spoke about sport, disparagingly criticizing Pep Guardiola, one of the most successful coaches in the history of football," Renzi wrote on social media.

The IV leader specifically takes issue with the minister's comparison. "He compared him to a 'cucumber' who acts like a 'phenomenon.' If someone like Salvini claims to be explaining football, values, and life to someone like Guardiola, I feel the need to publicly express my solidarity."

Renzi then addressed the young members of the League directly, with a highly polemical passage: "To the young people of the League I say: whatever they've done in their lives, they don't deserve to spend a Sunday in August listening to the madness of a man we theoretically pay to be a minister."

Then the final attack on Salvini: "Despite everything, they don't deserve it either. Removing Salvini from the government and sending him back to harangue at the sports bar is a moral duty for all people of good will."

The former Prime Minister's words thus reignite the internal political conflict between the majority and the opposition, this time stemming from a controversy related to the world of football.