Rome, from the Rape of the Sabine women to basketball teams: the coach's irony
“In 750 B.C. the first inhabitants of Rome, brave but lacking females, at the command of Romulus, invaded the neighborhood and enacted the famous “Rape of the Sabine Women.” Today, a few millennia later, Rome, deprived of top basketball, embarks on the equally famous “Rape of the Sabine teams.” I cannot help but remember that from that rape originated the greatest empire known in antiquity. Will it be the same for the Rome of future basketball?” Asking this question, on his own social networks, is Valerio Bianchini, one of the most successful coaches in the history of Italian basketball.
The reference to the “rat of the teams” is not coincidental: in recent weeks the rumor of a possible transfer of the sports title of Pallacanestro Trieste to Rome has become increasingly insistent, a hypothesis that has stirred up discussion in the entire national basketball environment. And Bianchini himself, in an interview granted to Il Messaggero, did not hide his concern for the fate of the Julian square: “It would be terrible,” said the ‘Vate. Modern basketball has its roots long ago, when at the time of the exodus Bogoncelli brought Cesare Rubini from Trieste and helped make Milan great, first with the Borletti brand and then with Simmenthal. Not to mention that the people of Trieste were also wronged in the Stefanel era.” A warning loaded with history, recalling how Trieste has already paid a very high price in the past in the name of others’ ambitions.
The coach then added: “We are talking about a historical square, which has passion and almost 5,000 subscribers. Unfortunately, I don’t think Matiasic will retrace his steps, I just hope that Trieste can still have a team in A or A2.” Words that sound like a melancholic farewell to a basketball reality rooted in the territory, but also like an appeal so that the city is not left completely orphaned of great basketball.
After all, Bianchini knows Rome and its ambitions better than anyone else. It was precisely he who brought the Scudetto to the capital in the 1982-83 season, at the helm of Banco di Roma, in a city that was then experiencing a moment of great ferment: “It was a Rome that had come out of the Dolce Vita, that was removing the dust of the ministerial city from its shoulders: with Liedholm and Falcao it was winning the Scudetto in soccer, small digital companies were being born, there was a reawakening,” the coach recalled in a recent interview with Repubblica. An unrepeatable context, which makes the challenge of bringing elite basketball back to the Eternal City even more fascinating – and at the same time arduous.
Bianchini’s career remains an indispensable reference point for anyone who wants to talk about Italian basketball: he was the first coach to win three championships with three different teams, taking the titles with Cantù in 1981, with Rome in 1983 and with Pesaro in 1988. His palmarès also includes 2 Champions Cups, 1 Cup Winners’ Cup, 1 Intercontinental Cup and 1 Coppa Italia. An authority that lends even more weight to his words whenever he chooses to speak on the present – and the future – of the national basketball movement.
