They wanted the electoral bomber, a left wing for Forza Italia, the number 11 shirt in the House of Freedom. to win him over, Silvio Berlusconi made the direct move: long phone call, half an hour. Maybe a phone call extends life and makes you think but Gigi Riva in the end said no. He thought about it, he agonized over it, he gathered opinions from near and far, and he repeated no. But he isn't angry with politics or even with Berlusconi: on the contrary. If you really have to split hairs, he doesn't even have it against the center left, he doesn't side with Pili or even with Soru. Who is he with, then? With the Sardinians, he says. Especially with those "forgotten by God, ignored by the Government and the Region". This is to let it be known that he has made a discovery: politics. He also adds a mea culpa: until now, making a sensational mistake, he has read the newspapers by going straight to the sports pages. «Error, I shouldn't have done that». Trust in injury time to equalize. Despite almost turning sixty, he runs at breakneck speed to get to the net. "We have a duty to improve ourselves." Having said that, he throws down thoughts like a downpour of ideas, careful - indeed very careful - not to betray any sympathies, to show the human side of the champion.

In via Tola in Cagliari, in the headquarters of the football school that bears his name, he stands behind one of the two available desks for what should just be a clarification, a five-minute thing: to explain why he rejected the candidacy for the Regionals, the reality has become something more and different, a river confession about Sardinia and those who live there, about the Costa Smeralda and those who pass through, about voting, about the bad luck of those who got their country of birth wrong, about the future. He charges, one after the other, thin Muratti that throw blue clouds, in the intervals he holds a therapeutic mouthpiece, desolately empty, between his teeth: waiting for the next cigarette.

Looking at him, it seems difficult to imprison him inside an electoral holy card, to spread a smile and ask him to vote for me. He has the manner of a discreet man, at times even embarrassed since for once he isn't talking about football. It's even more difficult to imagine him at those noisy dinners where, between one glass and another, we toast electoral glories and the accommodation of friends. Friends of friends included. Gigi Riva doesn't have the face to deserve a part like this. Or at least that's how it seems to someone who doesn't have to ask him any questions about football but would like to understand: is it constructed, does it sell rhetoric, does it make a scene? He declares himself, in his words, tense: in fact he doesn't stop smoking. But this business of politics that he has snubbed for too long weighs on him, and he wants to bring it out, make it known to the Sardinians who he considers - he, an emigrant from the Varese area - to be his countrymen.

«I arrived here when I was seventeen. Your defects have become my defects." He assures that the teleselection chat with the Cavalier did not surprise him. "But it made me think."

At what?

«To the fact that that phone call would have made me end up, for the first time in my life, on the wrong page of the newspapers. I asked myself: what do I have to do with politics?”

Answer?

"Nothing. But I was wrong. Because politics decides my life and that of all of us every day. I told Berlusconi that Sardinia must stop hiding behind the myth of the Costa Smeralda. Especially since the Costa Smeralda isn't even ours. It was just born in our sea."

Are you angry with ultra-luxury tourism?

"No. In fact I think that the Maddalena archipelago is the most beautiful place in the world. It is a thesis that I have also supported with colleagues who are in love with other places. Maldives, for example."

And she?

«I haven't seen the Maldives. But I didn't say this. Returning to Berlusconi, I simply pointed out to him that we disguise ourselves behind the miracle of the sea and pretend that Sardinia is the one photographed in the blue brochures that we send all over the rich planet."

And he?

«He kept telling me that for these reasons I was the right person to join the Regional Council».

Alright, they've already found the reserve: Massimo Cellino.

«I spoke to him for a long time. He called me and we ran out of cell phone battery."

What do you think of this candidacy for the bench.

"I think we sportsmen should play in other fields."

Is this a stretch?

«Massimo Cellino is not naive, he is an entrepreneur: he will have made his assessments. I hope he is convinced, I hope he has found good reasons to go on loan to a world that is not his."

Gigi Riva's soul dreams on the right?

«Neither to the right nor to the left. In my life I have also voted for very small parties. When I go to the polls I look for the man who inspires trust in me, not the symbol."

Ever disappointed?

«Yes, unfortunately yes».

For many Sardinians his words are Supreme Court rulings.

«I know, I'm happy about it and I don't want to disappoint them. I sympathize with those who make mistakes, with those who live in a certain way."

What would be the certain way?

«Have we ever asked ourselves what we have done for the shepherds, for the people who live in the isolated villages of Barbagia or Ogliastra? Politics, the one with a capital P, doesn't even give them a glance. And we, all of us I say, are only capable of considering them from negative aspects, ready to judge them."

This does not mean...

«Wait, I want to finish the thought. I say: it won't be my generation that will solve the problems of internal Sardinia and perhaps not even that of my granddaughter but staying inactive is guilty."

Are you announcing that you will go into politics anyway?

«I just want to remind you that renewal must start from the heart of Sardinia. If I were to found a party I would move between Oristano, Macomer, Nuoro, Mamoiada, Lanusei... do you understand? Is it possible that no one realizes?".

About what?

«That this is a living, true, authentic Sardinia. A Sardinia that only has the misfortune of being one hundred kilometers from the places where champagne parties are held. On the other hand, they don't have an ambulance and they have to go to war to avoid losing the post office."

Moral?

«Moral: people don't want me to go into politics because people don't like politics. I told them again, to Pili and Soru, that living in a certain world is difficult."

What scares you?

«I hear about snipers, about secret voting used like a lock pick. When I ask for explanations, they reply: it's politics, man. I don't need to show off, I thought I could be useful. That's all".

Berlusconi's proposal is flattering.

"Certainly".

Did he also feel used?

«I'm sixty years old and have a degree in life experience. I jump at certain situations. No, I don't think it was instrumental."

In your opinion, why does politics need outsiders?

«We serve the survival of the species. And we bring votes. Voters must change their mental attitude: they must not vote for Gigi Riva because he is Gigi Riva but for what he does, or rather what he should do."

You need sensitivity, attention.

«And then we must become responsible for the return to politics because politics, I would like to shout, is us».

Are the people in the stadiums a maneuvering mass?

«Today many interests have entered football: sponsors, business, television. Behind it, you find the politician. Which protects a team because, through the fans, it can attract votes."

Have you often been asked to run?

"Yes, often. I have always refused."

Didn't she like the idea of walking around in velveteen and white tennis shoes?

"I could not".

And rallies, do you know that he should have held rallies?

"For charity. I haven't been on television for six years. I work for the national team and am only available during the post-match press conference. I don't go to anyone, anyone."

Not even from Maurizio Costanzo?

"He had a secretary call me but I declined the invitation."

She's almost a hero.

"I wasn't aware of it."

However, Graziano Mesina's appeal was accepted.

«That yes. I think he was in Porto Azzurro, he had to organize a championship among prisoners and he asked me for red and blue shirts. I remember saying to him: Graziano, couldn't you have thought about starting a football team first?".

Aside from talk shows, what else don't you like?

«I don't like those who change their shirts halfway through their political mandate. It's not fair, you were voted to stay in your place."

Could it be that the profession of champion is incompatible with that of honourable?

«Another thing I don't understand: honorable. No offense, but can you explain to me why I have to call someone I voted for honorable? Honorable of what?

Have you always gone to vote?

«I had the temptation to abstain, the dilemma of not knowing who to vote for. Then, however, I have always done my duty as a voter. And I would do it even more now, in this Sardinia decimated by the euro. Prices are the same as in Milan. What isn't the same is the salaries."

Why did you stay away from politics?

«Because the idea of asking for the vote and then not being loyal, not keeping your promises, disgusted me. I realize that it is an environment too far from mine. Faced with the prospect of a candidacy, I said to myself: and do you believe that you, the last arrival, will be the one to change those people?

Thus, problems become eternal.

«Desires remain: like a Carlo Felice that is truly a road, the railways that we don't have, the right to health, services for the weakest».

Was he governor?

«More than governor, magician. Around Sardinia I have seen too many injustices and scandalous differences. And so I would like to make the luckiest people experience what it means to be on the other side, what it means to live in the solitude of the pastures, in the silence of many countries. I would like them to try having dinner with a piece of cheese and a glass of wine. For one day, just one day, I would like to reverse the roles."

Shepherds and farmers on a trip to Porto Cervo?

"I did not want to say this. But it would be nice to take note of what others don't have. Respect them as far as possible. Let's not talk about Costa Smeralda."

She does not like?

"I do not know her. I go to Porto Cervo in the winter to play golf. Never seen it in the summer."

Porto Rotondo?

"I know where it is but I've never been there."

Do we need ten Aga Khans to change our fortunes?

«More than ten Aga Khans it would be better to have fifty more factories. Employment, work. The Aga Khan did a lot for a certain image of Sardinia but another aspect must also be underlined: he created a world that is not Sardinian-sized. What we need today is to stop the children from fleeing with the suitcase, the new emigration. The Aga Khan, with all due respect, is not our future."

Have you ever noticed the local defects?

«I arrived here when I was seventeen, in '63. They said: poor thing, he ended up in Sardinia. Obviously, over time I have acquired the Sardinian way of thinking and being. Starting with distrust, which however is part of our history. The Sardinians have always been mistreated and when they say that good people don't come from the sea, they are not wrong."

Envy.

«Envy and jealousy. It's true, they are part of us but they are feelings that you frequently find in cities and large centers rather than in small villages."

Distancing between the real world and the political world.

"Immense. They are two planets that do not meet. Politics has not followed or, rather, does not have the following as it should. I said she wasn't loved, which is why they suggested I not accept."

In fact.

«I apologize if I talk about football but I would like to talk about a goal that politics has never achieved. I'm proud of what I did, what we did, in Cagliari's golden years, between '68 and '72. In addition to being an important sporting achievement, ours was a social victory. At the time, Sardinia was only spoken of as a land of bandits."

With footballers instead?

«It may seem banal, but by beating Inter or Milan at San Siro we knew we were making thousands of emigrants less depressed and a little more proud. We also received many letters from abroad: Sardinian workers, miners, traders scattered across Europe wrote to us to tell us that they felt redeemed. I'm happy to have contributed to that season."

What does politics have to do with it, excuse me?

«I wanted to say that in the years of autonomist history, Sardinian politics has never done anything similar, it has never made us feel redeemed, proud. Do you know what I regret? Not having kept those letters: they would be an extraordinary testimony."

Sardinia worse.

«I met that one too, of course. I think of when we got drunk on the sea and overdosed on cement, often without logic, without an order. I have no claim that the island is identical to the Paradise I saw when I arrived in '63."

We report the horrors.

«No, for goodness sake. I don't want to start controversies or divide."

Finalino.

«An appeal: don't skip the political pages of newspapers anymore. Read it, politics. Deal with it. Otherwise we will continue to be the last."

Giorgio Pisano

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