The world’s fastest sprinter is Victor Kamenoerts, holder of the hour record with 55.089 km. Last summer, during the Tokyo Games, the thirty-year-old Flemish cyclist was in front of the TV: he could not run the time trial on the road, won by Primoz Rogi, as there were only two places per nation and the Belgian selector named him Vout van Aert and Remco was reserved for Evenpole. So Campenaerts remained in Belgium as runners had to compete, such as Iranian Saeed Safarzadeh, who arrived 10’10” from Roglik, Algerian Azzedine Lagab, who arrived 10’17” late, and Ahmed Badredin Vice, representative of the “Refugee Olympics”. Team from Slovenian”, last at 13’36”.

Something similar will happen in the next Football World Cup as well. Two out of three will stay at home between Italy, Portugal and Turkey, as was the case with Azurri itself and Holland in 2018, to make room for Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Panama, among others.

after all Soccer’s Italy, at risk of being knocked out of the final stage of the 2022 World Cup, should have dropped registration as soon as Qatar’s choice was made official: a country as big as Abruzzo, but unlike the land that had seen the heretical Pescara di Gallione glow, completely devoid of football tradition. This strip of the Arabian Peninsula is a small sand valve that sealed the world’s largest natural gas field: a treasury that allowed the Emirate’s court to purchase a piece of the West, which was reclaimed after nuclear power had been abandoned. Reliance on fossils is taken for granted, late in progress and leaving bloody second thoughts. Qatari Arab penetration into Europe affects every socio-economic and cultural sphere; And it has also reached fatally into a world that is a continuation of politics by other means, namely sports. In 2016, the World Cycling Championships took place in Doha, first literally in the desert and then in a circuit without spectators, with a ghost town of uninhabited skyscrapers or under construction; The royal order of arrival, with three world champions already on stage (Sagan, Cavendish and Boonen), did not quell a sense of desolation that things were out of place, a sentiment accentuated by the awards ceremony. Works without champagne and no valet.

Considering only Qatar’s candidacy, let alone accepting it, was the ultimate sign of dedication to the sport. – who actually strives for an unlikely virginity with infinite shortcuts of the politically correct, thus admitting a team of refugees to the Olympics, but not the third Belgian at the time of road trials – for reasons of profit . So the game world should have got the power to escape The peculiar gear of a fair, where it would be impossible in nature to set up, would completely distort the tradition, in indoor stadiums with air conditioning and is held at the end of the next northern autumn, due to possible consequences on the calendar of other competitions.

On a strictly ethical level, it wouldn’t be a shame to stay out of this mess. But if we remain on our ranks as Italian fans of the Azzurri, much more He would be sorry he didn’t try to play it, especially after winning the European Championship., And here it is clear, perhaps because we are once again among us, the absurdity of a thread that—to save a perceived planetary dimension of an event entirely contained in Europe and another part of Europe, in the Americas of the South The result of the migration – extends the final stage to 32 places, but reserves less than half for the part of the world that has given birth and development to football among its many historical virtues.

Let’s go to Lisbon and move east: Portugal, United Kingdom which in football means England Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, Eyre, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Spain, France, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Belgium, Holland Is. , Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, Serbia, Croatia. We are already over thirteen and almost all of these countries, regardless of the World Cup, deserve to be there anyway. This is not the logic of Super League, which went ahead in terms of money: Here is a chronological regional criterion of qualifying stage for determining technical disparity. Africa, the Caribbean, Oceania, the Near and the remote Levant should not be penalized, but not facilitated, by geographic location. If you really want to balloon the planet, eliminate the continental dimension of the initial stage, so – for example – the island of Tonga would deal with Germany and Turkmenistan with Uruguay. This would probably be a more efficient way of making football the worldview: can you imagine an Argentine-Faro match on the Torshavn pitch on one of these basalt rocks lost in the North Atlantic? Even Soriano would not have imagined it.

Patience. We will play it with Portugal or Turkey, North Macedonia allowed, Qatar tickets, The same country as the high jumper who, together with Italian Tambri, opted to close out the Olympic event with two gold medals in Tokyo. smuggling alternatives to the quintessential sport, in the excitement of the contemporary blue sprint across Jacobs’ 100 Floors; On the other hand, opportunistic mischief and at one time it was called Levantine, such that it was possible to be so long as to exchange a certain victory at the risk of finding silver in hand. Sport, sorry, there is something else. Compete, merit, the superior who wins, accepts defeat in pursuit of victory: this is the game. And a World Cup in Doha, from which many valuable teams will be left out because they are guilty of being European, is the opposite of sport.