Gravina, Mattia Furlani is a rage: "Spitting on others’ work"

The words of FIGC president Gabriele Gravina after Italy’s defeat in Bosnia and the Azzurri’s failure to qualify for the World Cup infuriated many fans and Italian athletes. Among them also an athletics star like Mattia Furlani, who responded in kind to Gravina. Gravina had responded thus to those who asked him about the failures of soccer compared to all the other blue sports, which are collecting successes never seen in the past: “Soccer is a professional sport, the others are amateur.”

So did Furlani, long jump world champion: “This speech just kills the values of sport and the work that the state and law enforcement (which I will continue to thank always) does to bring forward a movement and young athletes boys, to make PROFESSIONAL athletes to achieve their dreams with sacrifice, dedication and work,” he wrote on social.

“Apparently he does not realize what is behind it. I’m sorry because it is not only an insult to soccer what he said, it happened, but also to Italian sport. I will always fight if only through results, but also by showing here on social media what is behind the sport and the work … with an investment of 15 years that I made with my family on methods of work, study and passion, starting from living under a bridge to the world elite. Because that is what the profession is, not those who declare such things spitting on the work of others.”

Marathon runner Iliass Aouani also spoke out: “Perhaps in Italy it is time to reserve for these ‘amateur sports’ the attention that 95 out of 100 newspaper pages reserve only for soccer. Being a professional is not a title, but it is an attitude, carrying out an activity with competence, ethics and seriousness, the results on the field are a mirror of the quality work done by the individual and the system. Making alibis does not suit a true professional. I know amateurs who in mentality are much more professional than the players who are now being talked about far too much.”