Serie A and science, coexistence impossible but necessary

Serie A and science, coexistence impossible but necessarySerie A and science, coexistence impossible but necessary

The waiting times for the resumption of the Serie A are longer. That’s why what makes the difference is the relationship with science, at the necessary but impossible moment

The Serie A that thought to start again on May 4 with training in small groups, on the model of the Bundesliga, on Sunday evening found itself discovering that it will not be possible to do team activities until at least May 18. At the same time, Mike Ryan, the Irish chief of the global emergency program, expressed probably the most important concept to understand at what point is not only football, but the whole sport, in the process of coexistence with the global pandemic:

‘At the moment no one accepts that there is no zero risk. Governments, faced with the challenge they are facing, must make decisions from which consequences will arise and be accused of those consequences. People will say: why did you let that happen? Now we have another outbreak. ‘

The coexistence between football and science

If the government takes responsibility for restarting football, and all other sports that are not individual, or even just training, and then one or more members are infected and a new outbreak emerges in a retreat, or in a hotel, or in the neighborhood of the city where the stadium is located, which also hosted around 300 people behind closed doors to allow the game to take place, that government must answer not one, but two pressing questions. The first one: who takes responsibility for what happened? And it is a question that is not circumvented, the same that the social doctors of the Serie A teams ask themselves by analyzing the Lega and Figc protocol for the resumption of activities. There are legal, criminal, not just ethical responsibilities. The second question may also be more stringent than the first: why did you allow it to happen? This is expressed in a very fashionable concept these days, also used by several ministers: ‘there are more important things to think about than football’. It doesn’t mean that football isn’t important. It means that in the common perception, a people in the moment of emergency is willing to take risks in front of activities considered necessary such as for example guaranteeing the food supply chain to bring products to supermarkets and allow people to eat, but is not willing to to bear that risk in the face of activities considered secondary such as entertainment. It is basically a fuzzy reasoning, because entertainment at all levels and therefore also sports is a primary necessity of human beings in the daily management of the emergency, but it starts from a physiological, almost anthropological, unassailable consideration. For this reason, the coexistence between football and science, as well as between science and all the daily activities of a country, becomes the real primary theme for analyzing the possible recovery of football and sport.

The concept of zero risk

Here is another point which, if not adequately debated and understood, risks moving the level of debate and clashes infinitely forward between those who want to start again and those who ask for maximum caution. When will we reach a point where scientific evidence exists to say that it will be safe to gather 10, 20, 200, 2000, 20000 people in the same place for a game or a race? The answer is: never. Not until the virus is defeated, through its disappearance or through the appearance of a cure. And if you cannot reach the zero risk parameter to which science by its nature aspires and tends, in the phase of coexistence with the virus, who takes responsibility for allowing the resumption of training? Who gives the go-ahead to play a game even if behind closed doors? It is a theme that we have already covered. There will come a time, and at some point it will no longer be possible to move the answer forward, in which someone will have to do it and it will not be science simply because it is not his job. The concept of zero risk currently does not really have to do with the entirely hypothetical possibility that there is no possibility of contagion on a football field or anywhere else in the world. It has to do with the ability to accept risk as a consequence of progress that is partly scientific, that is, to be better prepared to treat any new infected, and partly psychological, or to find the security needed to move in a world that it suddenly reminded us that it can be more dangerous and uncontrollable than we were willing to recognize. It is these two parameters that will allow someone to take that responsibility. Or more precisely, to definitely take one of these two paths: either you play accepting a dose of risk, or you decide that you can no longer play until the virus disappears even if it takes years. But it is more likely that it will happen in more advanced countries both from the point of view of common feeling (we all renounce something, in terms of safety, to guarantee everyone something from the point of view of collective well-being, even if it is only connected to the entertainment it generates sports entertainment) and from the decision-making point of view. In Italy, at the moment, dribbling halfway between the institutions and the technical-scientific committees is generating a sterile possession of the ball in which everyone touches the ball but nobody finalizes. On the one hand, the clubs (which had already formed a quarrelsome anthill divided by opposing interests for years) have accused the sports minister of sabotaging football, on the other, football is also accused by institutional bodies of living with a certain arrogant indifference to above the country’s problems (as well as its economic possibilities). Of course on the field there comes a time when someone has to shoot on goal and also takes on the consequences of the gesture. At this stage, as regards Serie A, nobody is willing to take the initiative because the risks of making that shot wrong are perceived as infinitely higher, in statistical terms, than hitting the target. That’s why the resumption of football, and team sports, could happen late in Italy. Because the coexistence between sports entertainment and science is currently impossible and the path to make it a necessary condition has just begun.

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