Minister Abodi, punishing football doesn’t help sport

“Public opinion would not understand.” This is how Andrea Abodi explained the decision to oppose the amendment that would have allowed football clubs to pay in installments over five years, without sanctions, the 480 million taxes deferred due to the pandemic. A choice therefore which, instead of being inspired by the solution to the enormous problems facing the clubs after the years of Covid, seems to be guided mainly by the mood of the citizens. In short, a choice that has the flavor of populism. After all, what could be simpler than taking a downhill road, to the point of throwing yourself into the arms of people? And never mind if a minister, including that of sport, should be inspired by completely different principles: for example, support Serie A football, which in that world, of sport in fact, is certainly not irrelevant. World that, among other things, Abodi has attended for a long time, having led the Serie B League and ran for the presidency of the FIGC. Football is in a very serious emergency, it needs concrete and immediate help. In an interview with the Gazzetta, Paolo Scaroni, president of Milan, but also manager of experience and quality said: “The League doesn’t want to pity anyone, but it should.”

A harsh yet apt expression. Football after the pandemic, after closed or limited-capacity stadiums, after the flight of sponsors, after the frightening collapse in revenues, is in an economic crisis that has now even become a crisis of loneliness, because nobody seems to care. Not even the Government and the Minister of Sport who should directly deal with it. The latest blow seems to be looming with the decision to include tax installments with a 3 percent default in the Budget Law, thus placing the clubs in the group of tax evaders, forgetting that football has deferred payment using an instrument granted by the Government, did not evade the taxman. He used the delay to try to make his own accounts less dramatic, in the absence of real resources allocated by the successive Executives, as has instead been done for other sectors of our country. It would frankly be absurd if the State were to ask for the restitution of a sum that the State itself had allowed to be deferred. This is why the fine sounds like a joke, which can only be explained by the desire to punish the world of football in its entirety: who invests in it and who represents it. We have already said and recalled that we are not talking about a virtuous universe: the mistakes of many, even in economic management, are there for all to see (even those of the magistrates). But our Serie A is not entirely based on fictitious capital gains. It is not made up only or above all of financial devices. It is made up of entrepreneurs who deposit or remit money. Which feed a sector with other numbers that should make us reflect. One hundred and ten thousand, for example: these are the jobs guaranteed by our most popular sport. One billion: this is what Serie A clubs pay to the treasury, the vast majority of the revenue produced by the entire sport. Ten billion and 300 million: this is the indirect impact on GDP. Why is all this not recognized? Because he pretends not to know that football – amateur, amateur, youth – and the sport of our country are supported by the money paid by Serie A. All elements that Abodi knows very well. The time has come to prove it.