Italians will recover. Sport surfing may not.
Italy is playing England today for the Euro Cup soccer finals and I only really know this because I am in Rome headed to Naples via train.
A sailboat is waiting for me there but more on that later.
Soccer.
The Italians don’t seem as excited as they should be. A few roving bands of youths in blue shirts half-heartedly talking with their hands but not much more. No flags flying from balconies. No morning drinking and cheering, crowding around television sets dialed to the very latest analysis.
Maybe global warming’s fault?
It is sweltering, already, at 10:00 am and set to hit triple digits later. Much cooler than Salem, Oregon but hot nonetheless.
Maybe Covid’s?
People forgetting how to celebrate together?
Forgetting how to maraud?
I was in France then Germany at the very beginning of the pandemic, surfing the apocalypse with my young daughter. There was a wild sizzle in the spring air then. No one knew what was going to happen. Empty palaces and restaurants and zoos. Closures and lockdowns and sweeping governmental decrees felt new.
Now, it all feels normal but still. No wild soccer scenes on the streets of a soccer wild country.
Is sport dead?
Right ahead of surfing’s grand Olympic coming out?
What a disaster for our beloved pastime, if true, to have pivoted hard sport at the dawn of the World Surf League era what with NFL Paul Speakers and tennis Soph Goldchmidts and Oprah Erik Logans pushing pushing pushing for respect, sporting respect, when the greatest thing going is…. soul.
Not soul, sorry that’s the jet lag typing, but whatever is not sport or, rather, not serious sport.
I love competitive surfing, don’t get me wrong, but serious sport surfing is sadder than Italians not knowing how to celebrate soccer superiority and that’s pretty sad.
Or maybe not.
Italians will recover. Sport surfing may not.
How does that make you feel?
I’m going to ruminate more once I’m on boat.