Italy’s repechage to the World Cup, Gianni Rivera comes down hard on it
More than half a century after the historic 1970 World Cup final, Gianni Rivera looks bitterly at the present of Italian soccer. Interviewed by La Gazzetta dello Sport, the former Azzurri number 10 commented on the difficult moment of the national team, which is back from its third failure to qualify for a World Cup in recent years: “It happened. Champions are not born and it is hard without them to get great results. I always say and repeat it: clubs no longer believe in the policies that created, built and made the Baresi brothers and Maldini grow. In Serie A, and even in Serie B, the few good players are now practically foreigners,” Rivera said, identifying the shortcomings of the training system as one of the movement’s main problems.
According to the former Ballon d’Or winner, the responsibility falls mainly on the clubs: “Instead of growing the boys and taking them to high levels, they have left everything in the hands of the procurers.” An accusation that Rivera elaborates further, denouncing the increasing weight of agents in modern soccer: “They have invaded soccer, they think first of all about improving their pockets. I know of many families who have given up on having their children continue because they did not have the money to pay agents. Those children maybe would be on the national team today.”
While maintaining a very critical stance, Rivera makes it clear that he does not want to demonize the category: “Mine is not a crusade against the figure of the agent, which I consider in any case one of the causes of the problems that put the football system in crisis. I make precise reflections. There is the devaluation of talent, agents have too much power, and young people are heavily penalized. Someone has to lend a hand, I am ready. But not Maradona’s mano de dios, like 40 years ago right at the Azteca… We need to change at the institutional level.”
The former champion then addressed the issue of the upcoming federal elections, openly siding with Giancarlo Abete in the race for the presidency of the FIGC: “They are two decent people, two sportsmen. I choose Abete because he has always loved soccer and knows it deeply and, above all, because I share all the key points of his election program: structural reform of the leagues, revision of formats, planning, facilitations, enhancement of the nurseries, revitalization of the National Teams and much more. I am sorry, bitter instead, that the Footballers’ Association supports Malagò’s program.”
Rivera finally recalled the birth of the Italian Footballers’ Association, founded in 1968 together with Sandro Mazzola, Giacomo Bulgarelli, Giancarlo De Sisti and lawyer Sergio Campana. “Back then the Student Movement was waving class consciousness, we soccer players were talking about professional consciousness. When we left we were considered nabobs, there was a lot of prejudice. To people we were a category of spoiled billionaires. But the privileged were few, we became an important movement. Soccer belongs to the footballers, the association belongs to us. Now everything is conditioned and polluted by the prosecutors. This bothers me a lot,” he concluded.
