At a certain point of Enrico Casarosa's "Luca", the latest Disney and Pixar animation film, the two protagonists, Luca and Alberto, build a rather primitive Vespa scooter. They plan to launch with it in the sea from the top of a hill and, as they get ready, Alberto checks what should be the right side rearview mirror where he has stuck a picture portraying Marcello Mastroianni. After checking he symbolically looks as good as him, he recklessly pushes the scooter down the hill in a joyful moment that captures all the elation of summer.
It is undeniable that Mastroianni is an icon of style and elegance in Italy and in the rest of the world, so Alberto's rearview mirror trick is particularly clever. Yet your nationality doesn't make you instantly cool and stylish or uncool and unstylish.
The Italian team at the UEFA Euro 2020 European soccer championship (postponed to this year because of Coronavirus) looked undoubtedly dapper in their Emporio Armani off-field formal uniforms.
The label has got a four-year deal with the Italian Soccer Federation and Emporio Armani also dresses Italy's national Under 21 and women's soccer teams (besides, Armani's company designed the uniforms for the Italian national soccer team for the 2012 and 2016 Olympics and for the 1994 World Cup, while also creating uniforms for other soccer teams, such as Newcastle United, Chelsea and Bayern Munich).
The light blue mandarin collared blazers matched with black trousers looked effortlessly elegant: they were inspired by the coach who helped the Italian team win the World Cup in 1982, the late Enzo Bearzot, whose elegance was perfectly matched by the sprezzatura of the Azzurri's current coach, Roberto Mancini.
Yet, during the Euro 2020 soccer championship there was something that didn't match their elegance – the fact that the team opted not to take the knee, an anti-racist gesture, in the first matches. Fascists were jubilant about this choice, anti-racists stated they should have knelt, politicians intervened and the debate started.
When five players - Federico Bernardeschi, Andrea Belotti, Emerson Palmieri, Matteo Pessina and Rafael Toloi - knelt together with the Welsh team before the Italy-Wales match, while others chose to stand, a new debate reopened.
Eventually the team issued a statement affirming they were "against all forms of racism," even if they didn't kneel, but then changed views and announced they would take a knee before kickoff if the opposition requested it. In a nutshell, kneeling would have been a gesture of solidarity and sensitivity towards the other team.
In the meantime, a street art piece by graffiti artist Harry Greb portraying a subbuteo player kneeling was defaced in Rome by the supporters of far-right group CasaPound, inviting the players to remain standing with the gesture of the fascist Roman salute.
The Italian team's decision was rather awkward, considering that racism is rampant in Italian football, as proved by a tragic incident occurred at the beginning of June 2021 when Italian football youth player Seid Vasin - who abandoned a professional football career two years ago - took his life after suffering constant racial abuse and revealing in a letter that at one point he had started feeling ashamed of being black.
The ghost of racism manifested itself also in the aftermath of the Italy Vs England match at Wembley on Sunday night. England lost on penalties and its fans, whose hybris had reached incredible levels already in the early hours of the afternoon and who were by then sure that the cup was definitely "coming home", went berserk. The cup after all wasn't coming home but it was "coming to Rome" as Italian fans highlighted.
The bitter disappointment that England's fans felt after watching Jadon Sancho, Marcus Rashford and Bukayo Saka missing the spot-kicks, soon turned into fully-fledged racism against the three Black players on social media and into violence against Black England fans going home after the match. The behaviour was totally unforgivable and incompatible with the team that features nine Black players and that always took a knee throughout the competition.
Yesterday UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson condemned the abuses against England players, forgetting that a month ago he himself didn't fully support the team taking the knee nor condemned those fans who booed the team for kneeling. In June, Home Secretary Priti Patel also called taking the knee "gesture politics". While Natalie Elphicke, the Tory MP for Dover and Deal, stated in a WhatsApp message to fellow MPs, that Rashford should have concentrated on football rather than "playing politics", a statement referring to his campaign for free school meals for low-income pupils.
Now, some commentators claim that sports and politics are different things, but this is as wrong as claiming that fashion doesn't have anything to do with politics. Political leaders dress to show their power and politics and social issues are also part of sports and they have been part of the Euro 2020 championship.
After all, in June the city of Munich wanted to light up its stadium where the match Germany Vs Hungary was going to be take place with the colours of the rainbow to celebrate Pride month and LGBTQ+ rights. Permission was asked but UEFA declined the request because of its political context (but maybe afraid of offending Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán whose far-right government had just passed a law banning LGBT content in schools or kids' TV) and stated that UEFA is a "politically and religiously neutral organisation".
There will be more politics in sports in future as the European Parliament voted in favour of a non-binding resolution calling on EU countries to decline taking part in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics "unless the Chinese Government demonstrates a verifiable improvement in the human rights situation" in Hong Kong and the Xinjiang Uyghur Region. Besides, the attention is also focused on the FIFA World Cup next year that will take place in Qatar, a country that will face the international scrutiny of its human rights performance for the labour exploitation and abuse of its migrant workforce.
So while as an Italian, I'm naturally happy Italy won the Euro 2020 championship as the country needed a boost and a moment of happiness (even though you wish more people had worn face masks during the celebrations to avoid new cases of Coronavirus…) after a disastrous and dark year in which hundreds of thousands of people died from COVID-19 and too many people lost their jobs and their faith in the future. Yet there is still a lot to do: Italy's team may have the proper uniforms, the style and even a coach with an enviable dose of sprezzatura, but it must learn to take a firm anti-racist stand that can help raise awareness.
England's team will have to learn to take a defeat: removing the silver medals immediately after they were presented to them by UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin could only be interpreted as lack of respect. England's fans will have to do the same, leave their hybris behind and be more humble, show respect during national anthems and be re-educated to contain their destructive anger, devastating violence and extreme vulgarity.
Social media companies will have to do their part and be more strict with abusers attacking people online, but you feel that the real change will be driven by athletes. In June Cristiano Ronaldo removed two bottles of Coca-Cola that were placed before him during a press conference and opted for water, a healthier alternative, starting a trend.
Fighting for human rights may not be as easy as removing a sponsor's carbonated drinks, but launching a message in a stadium or in any other sports venue can have an impact on millions of fans that may become more aware about certain issues and rediscover how cheering for a team means cheering for all humanity and for the wonderful diversity of the world.
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