What is this, if not an advance from Superlega, or an announcement from it? It is clear that there will be no more half measures: either we are misery, and we are now in good company, or we are nobility, and as usual it will be for very few. Therefore, we will no longer be able to be together. With formidable timing, and to highlight the usual paradoxes of those crafty managers, in the same days in which with one hand he asks the government for refreshments, football with the other sprays the January market with sumptuous transfers: Juventus gives 75 million to the Fiorentina for Vlahovic and about twenty to the intermediaries, Inter almost 25 to Atalanta for Gosens, who has not played for 5 months and will return at the end of February. How much grace.

It is evident, besides the fact that everyone is making fun of us, that up there we travel at other speeds; that Juve are not among mere mortals (its parent company Exor had a turnover of 136 billion dollars in 2021: yes, 136 billion), that even Inter is among the happy few at least as long as all the financial scaffolding set up by the Zhangs hold up , that Atalanta is an ally on the market therefore large life long rest in Bergamo move well than pure in Europe, otherwise the mysterious Diallo will not move for a legendary shot like the 40 million collected by Manchester United: in a year he has not played only one match in the Premier League, now the Red Devils have loaned him out to Rangers, and on to another. Then there is Milan, which is more frugal in spending but is an ally of Inter for the Milan stadium and what matters a lot, then there is Naples which has its own strict autonomy, wrong choices about coaches and players, now is in the prime for years.

CAPITAL IN PURSUIT

The Roman, then? They still chase. But we are in a crucial phase, to stay behind now to say to stay there forever, we must hurry. A certain slowdown in the train of the first, in the last month, has led to suppose that a dream-Champions was still possible for Rome and Lazio, with a second round at high levels. But the cleaver dropped with Vlahovic at Juventus narrows the objectives. To stay in the running, market responses would be urgently needed, not limited to Maitland-Niles and Sergio Oliveira, but the dish is still crying, they say. Lazio is always grappling with the dark affair of the liquidity index, which made Sarri lose patience and exhausted the fans. Roma pays for the recklessness and colossal topics of the recent past, when enlightened executives have burdened the club’s budgets with the current third salary in Serie A, a madness that has obvious consequences: if someone like Diawara earns 2.5 million a season, it is clear that the accounts will never add up, and now they say that if Diawara does not accept transfers, a midfielder cannot arrive in his place, but go to understand. Mourinho and Sarri are struggling in these small miseries, and keeping all the pressure on them as in July.

PENDING

Lazio deals with the attacking joker Miranchuk, perhaps good for a conversion to 4-3-1-2. Sarri seems to have placidly surrendered to the state of the art, almost waiting for the revolutions he is asking for from June (including the sale of Milinkovic-Savic, if it were functional to a project), and in recent months it seemed a lot Zen, like Confucius on the river bank, no exception to the form, he waits and hopes. He is forced by circumstances to field Luis Alberto, who often played with detachment or condescension, clearly out of context, stuff that someone like this Mourinho would have already purged, or almost.

ONE HALF OF THE WORK

Mourinho, in fact: he was more frenetic than Sarri, he agitated and stimulated, right from the details as in the history of the anthem sung at the stadium, to the purges, to the changes of set-up, to the launch of Felix from the Primavera, to the furious requests for reinforcement. A great job that laid the foundations for something, Rome now seems more square than Lazio in the immediate future, but more reinforcements are needed. That maybe they will come. The only certainty is that other small miracles are sustained in Mourinho and Sarri, such as reaching as high as possible, harpooning the Italian Cup, making way in Europe, making way in Europe. But think you have hired, or wizards?