New hit from the Vate: "Purists follow the minor leagues"
Valerio Bianchini puts the current situation of basketball in Italy in the crosshairs, focusing on certain aspects of the discipline. The ‘Vate’ chose his personal Facebook account to expound his point of view: “For decades, Serie A basketball has been resting on the generosity and passion of great patrons, neglecting the concept of how to sell the spectacle of basketball. Then successive generations of owners did not have the same pession and financial readiness, while arenas of the 1970s were inadequate to provide nourishment for the coffers. It should be added that the loss of the roster affected the smaller clubs that could no longer monetize the sale of their best virgins.
Bianchini in his post also gave the example of one square in particular. “Think of Cantù,” his social outburst read, “from where they littered the Peninsula with excellent players from the nursery getting the right reward. Today a new vision of how to pay the staggering salaries of certain players, those that the fans demand, a small revolution is needed that perhaps the participation of the NBA could help. Purists instead of tearing their robes like the priests in the Temple, can safely follow the minor leagues.”
This is not the first time Bianchini’s words have ignited debate in the Italian basketball world. In the past few weeks, the Bergamasque coach had already ended up at the center of controversy for some public releases on the issue of franchise transfers: he had ironically compared the arrival of basketball in Rome to the “Rape of the Sabine Women” of Romolian memory, and had openly defended the transfer mechanism by recalling that “the clubs that should allow the transfer to another location would be richly reimbursed.” Words that had triggered the furious reaction of Trieste’s fans, unless they were later partially softened by Bianchini himself, who had wanted to clarify how his thoughts were also moved by concern for the fate of the Julian square: “It would be terrible. We are talking about a historic square, which has passion and almost 5,000 subscribers.”
His statements about Virtus Roma had also raised a hornet’s nest of controversy. Interviewed by Il Messaggero, Bianchini had hoped for a promotion of Virtus Roma 1960 to make it “a development team where players can be sent to mature for a year,” phrases that had not pleased either the management or the historic Virtussino fans. The president of the Capitoline club, Massimiliano Pasqualini, had responded firmly: “Virtus Roma will never become a satellite club of either Trieste or Cremona. This club represents much more than just a basketball team: it is part of the city’s history and has been proudly carrying the name of Rome on Italian parquet for over sixty years.”
It is precisely Cantù, cited by Bianchini as a virtuous example of a nursery, that is at the center of an intense market session. The Brianza club has launched a new technical course with the return of Simone Giofrè as general manager and the arrival of Frank Vitucci on the bench to replace Walter De Raffaele. Vitucci and Giofrè have already shared winning experiences in the past, first in Varese and then in Brindisi, where together they built a cycle of success that included four playoff scudetto qualifiers and two Coppa Italia finals. On the market, one of the names being followed by the Brianza club is that of J.P. Macura, the protagonist of Treviso’s salvation in the season that just ended.
