To win, in football, you need resources. Which, in this particular case, are to be sought, first of all, in a well-structured club, made up of quality professionals and led by presidents able to support the whole thing financially, but also, clearly, to give the club itself a direction that is in some way political and administrative. And let no one be surprised at the reference to the political dimension, because the word is to be understood in two senses: the first is the one that points to the need to set the objectives to be reached; the second, more generally, refers precisely to the capacity to relate to and engage with the local area and those who lead and administer it. Then, once the ground has been laid for acting in a world as difficult as that of football, there is the problem of problems to face, namely that of resources, understood precisely as economic means, both as the overall assets to be presented as an extended symbol of what the club is potentially worth and, more prosaically, instead, as the budget one intends to invest each year: for infrastructure, such as the stadium; for expenses tied, in some way, to pressing bureaucratic needs; for those necessary to the team’s daily material subsistence and to those who revolve around it, from the storekeepers to the cleaning staff and so on; and, finally, the fundamental point, for wages and the transfer campaign. Now it is evident that what the Umbrian professional clubs, Perugia and Ternana above all, are lacking is chiefly this second aspect of the question. And to be clear, this does not mean that Perugia and Unicusano Ternana have no economic means and are not already spending a great deal to keep themselves in the professional Serie B championship; it means, rather, only that the two clubs cannot field, or do not wish to, for justified reasons of budget, what is needed for the one, Perugia, to have the chance of winning promotion to Serie A, as it has long been trying to do, and the other, Unicusano Ternana, for a quiet season with survival achieved without anxiety and the chance of putting down roots in the division for the years to come.

Perugia’s Challenge
So Perugia, for example, is aiming for Serie A, trying not to bleed itself dry as other clubs do with costly signings and possibly crippling wages. In this way seasons are born with somewhat piratical intentions, because Perugia aims to catch the other, favoured clubs off guard by fielding a group of players in which the loans of some athlete obtained from Serie A clubs sit together with, perhaps, some youngster picked up from the lower divisions. From this strategy there often result winning sides, but not to the point of making the leap up a division; or, as the sporting director Goretti says, there is always a piece missing to complete the puzzle. The strategy just described has in any case brought good results, if it is true that, in four years of Serie B, the play-offs have been reached three times in a row, including the current year, albeit with non-winning outcomes. Play-offs reached, what is more, under the guidance of debutant coaches or ones of modest footballing pedigree, and failed spectacularly in the one year in which a coach of great and recognised standing, attested by a notable cursus honorum, had been put in charge; which is like reasserting, almost carved in stone, the fact that the club can obtain success only with a mix of players and coaches not yet established or on their way up. A veritable exaltation of a sort of artisanal “do-it-yourself” and, at the same time, almost a confirmation that, without major investment, one does not get beyond honourable placings. Something, this last, that the Perugia club is beginning to experience with unease, to the point that some fear a possible disengagement on the part of the presidency.

Ternana’s Recklessness
Similar, but in many respects different, is the situation of Unicusano Ternana which, like the Grifo, meant and still means to create a football operation of some standing without, however, getting bogged down in spending too heavy and dangerous. Hence the bursting onto the scene of this club, anomalous in certain ways (for when has one ever seen an outfit strictly tied to the world of education and culture enter the football business?), with a transfer campaign focused entirely on little-known names and on a brash and, so to speak, “politically incorrect” coach. A bursting-in then accompanied by belligerent proclamations hurled at the enemy of the regional derbies. An on the whole ill-starred and imprudent choice that brought very poor results, so much so that an attempt was made to correct it in mid-course, though, evidently, too late. In short, Perugia and Ternana have tried and still try to make up for their economic inferiority with respect to other clubs by resorting, the first, to intelligent market operations and to the trust granted to coaches who are often debutants at the professional level; the other, Unicusano, instead, by trying to make up for the lack of resources by relying on the enthusiasm of debutants and also on a certain rather laughable jingoistic rhetoric. For both, in any case, the success of the project, whether Perugia’s of Serie A or Ternana’s of a solid presence in Serie B, is problematic, because football, in any case and everywhere, is ever more tied to money and, unfortunately, on top of that, Umbria does not seem to have important entrepreneurs who cultivate the possibility or the will to plunge into the football world. For this reason it will be well to be content, not least because football is, in any case, fun and thrilling wherever it is played and in whatever division, as anyone who loves it well knows.

Claudio Cagnazzo, journalist, a contributor to “Il Messaggero” and to the fortnightly “Rocca”. He writes on sport, customs and society.