The Paradox of the Excluded Champion: Conflicting Relationships Between Athletes and National Teams

by Paolo Grilli

It is a law written in the manual of the perfect sportsman: there is nothing above the national team. But the reality of the field, and even more of the locker room, often ends up making the relationship between the champion and his country’s shirt conflictual.

Not only does the economic question come into confrontation with healthier idealism. It goes without saying that it is the clubs, mainly, that feed the stars. But also the human factor, with the talents that have to submit to the mechanism of call-ups, and the value judgment of a coach – when not of a staff – can complicate the relationship with the most coveted uniform up to sensational results.

The last case speaks, obviously, of Paola Egonu, star of Italvolley ‘suspended’ in blue in view of the imminent qualifiers for Paris 2024. A missed call-up “agreed” – the term tries to cloak the growing discontent around the athlete – which certainly does not disassemble the paradox of the excluded champion.

In 2016, it was Camila Giorgi, the leading tennis player of our movement, who refused the blue. The Fed Cup match against Spain was at the door, and she said no to captain Corrado Barazzutti. She triggered the disqualification, with a fine, by the federation. But Camila was no longer a Fit member. More fuss, with quibbles taking the stage. Then, the reconciliation with the blue.

The one who didn’t dress Roberto Baggio at the end of his career. at the 2002 World Cup, and it would have been his fourth, coach Trapattoni did not want to call him. The Divine Codino had seriously injured his knee and was already 35 years old, of course, but his recovery had been prodigious. And perhaps a call for acquired merits could have been made, perhaps to guarantee even just a few minutes of quality with Roby: to then counteract, perhaps, the wicked decisions of the referee Moreno.

Eight years earlier, and here Baggio was indeed at the World Cup, the expulsion of Pagliuca in the match against Norway in Usa ’94 led coach Sacchi to immediately remove the number 10 from the field. The genius “sacrificed” for the good of squad. After all, it already happened to Roby in clubs that he was the stronger one, but uncomfortable. And he had to go to impress in Bologna and Brescia to be sure of his place on the pitch.

Another protagonist of the moment, Roberto Mancini, as a top-level player lived a complicated relationship, and of very little satisfaction, with the Azzurri. Four goals in 36 matches for Italy, with only one World Cup played in his curriculum, but then never taking the field, are certainly not a memorable score. At the origin of the contrasts, the excesses during a tour in the USA in 1984, with Bearzot who then excluded him throughout his management as coach. In 1998, it was Totti’s turn to watch the World Cup from the sofa.

All national teams have their own dark side. Kakà was left home from the home World Cup in 2014, that of the very painful “Mineirazo” for Brazil.

But it also happens on the best benches, including clubs. Misjudgments, relationships that struggle to take off, the unsaid that wins over clarity. Everyone remembers Ancelotti’s rejection of Thierry Henry at Juve. Today the former champion coaches France Under 21. And now it won’t be easy for him either, to make the list.

2023-09-06 04:49:10
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