On board Nave Amerigo Vespucci, during the stay in New York for the two hundred and fifty years of American independence, we met Andrea Abodi, Minister for Sport and Youth. With him we talked about the candidacy of Italy at Euro 2032, new stadiums, the legacy of Milan-Cortina and the basic sport, between great events and peripheries.
Minister, the Euro 2032 dossier enters a decisive phase. Beyond the respect of UEFA deadlines, what occasion is this candidacy to really change the face of Italian sports facilities and strengthen the image of the country abroad?
It is an event that must have a cultural impact, it must make us change a bit the paradigm that concerns the material infrastructure, hoping that in the future you do not need an appointment to do what you need to do. Ours is a country that often needs a stimulus, a deadline. I think it is very important that in 2026 we are discussing what must happen in 2032. For the first time the Italian Government is putting together a package of solutions of an administrative and financial nature, precisely to remove each alibi, to remove every resistance and every bond. It is no coincidence that we have ten stadium projects that are only going forward among the most important cities, starting from Rome and Milan, and this is the signal that we are going in the right direction, however late. They are stadiums with international characteristics, thanks also to the investments of international investors, in some cases American matrix. Milan and Inter in Milan and Rome have exactly these characteristics, and the hope is that culture, know-how and international marketing will evolve the football system. From the sporting point of view we are already ahead in general, it is football to have remained a little back, testify to the lack of Italy to the World Championship and the difficulty with which our teams go ahead also at European level.
Among the stages that could enter the dossier there is also the future plant of Rome in Pietralata. What will be the decisive elements in the final choice and what idea of stage has in mind for Italy of the next decades?
The stage of Rome is having a rapidization of the administrative process, so today we can say with reasonable certainty that it will be realized and that the process will end in a few months, thanks to the work of the Commissioner of Government who has this ownership, not only for Rome, to reduce and compress the times. It will be a fantastic stage, also of new conformation, an asymmetric stage in which the curve of the fans of the house will be even more monumental than the rest of the system, demonstrating the will to make the presence and passion of the public, that is the motor of football. They will be set with the characteristic of functionality, accessibility and economic sustainability, but also environmental. Most of them will have a positive energy balance, because I think the stadium coverage must be necessarily a photovoltaic system. Nothing particularly extraordinary, but from us it is practically never successful, so a novelty that I hope will be an element of address for sport in general, to optimize the relationship with production and energy consumption, and that can be a good example for civil society.
A few days ago he also met the new president of FIGC Giovanni Malagò. You also talked about the completion of the work of Milan-Cortina and the Youth Olympic Games of 2028. What is the legacy that these great events should leave the territories and citizens once the spotlight is turned off?
There are three important inheritances. The first is that of the material infrastructure, the permanent ones, because they continue to be a point of reference after the games and do not become, as it sometimes happened in the past, places that struggle to continue to live. The second element is the promotion of practice and sport culture, and also of the Olympic values, which have a meaning well beyond the Olympics and Paralympics. They are factors that help make society better, and I think we still have enormous margins of improvement. These five circles are not the symbol of sport, but the symbol of coexistence, sociality and respect. It is a legacy that we have to feed, and it helps us the fact that in 2028 we will have the Winter Youth Olympics, which will allow us to work very much, especially in the school, to root the Olympic values. The third is that of tourism promotion. The enormous global visibility has allowed the whole world to know even less well-known but beautiful places in our country, and I am convinced that this will determine over time a different way of conceiving tourism, more seasonally adjusted and distributed on the territory. Then there is an inheritance that we must manage, the financial one, because Milan-Cortina was a planetary success, recognized by all, but it made necessary investments not entirely covered by revenues. Together with President Malagò and the Fondazione Milano-Cortina we will also have to manage this aspect, which is not secondary. And when we talk about public resources, we do it with great respect.
From the Olympics to the Europeans, great events are increasingly opportunities for comparison between countries, but also diplomacy. Can Italy play a leading role in promoting sport as a language of peace, cooperation and dialogue among peoples?
This is what we are already doing, and we try to do it even more intensely, using also everything that the International Olympic Committee has done over the last twenty years and even more, with a presence within the United Nations which is the testimony of the role of a non-governmental organization. The government is totally aligned with doing its part, respecting roles and autonomy, to give every support to this diplomatic component, which operates at a low frequency modulation but can have an extraordinary effectiveness. Also the second part of the twentieth and post-war period is marked by the ability of individual sports disciplines to be a factor of cultural mediation, and we are convinced that a phase like this, even more conflictual and in some ways devastating, needs a sport dialogue that produces its effectiveness together with political diplomacy.
Alongside the great international events, the challenge of basic sport remains. How can you make sure that investments for events such as Euro 2032 and Milan-Cortina also produce benefits for amateur sports companies, schools and young people who practice sports every day?
Changing the paradigm a bit, as we are trying to do for three and a half years, following also the valuable indications of the modification of the Constitution, which provides the recognition of the value of sport as an educational, social and promotion tool for psychophysical well-being. I believe that the seventh paragraph of Article thirty-three of the Constitution is a very strong reference, which relates the competitions and the great performance with the social dimension of sport, which is what interests us most. The Italian model is consecrating itself, with this government, precisely on the balance between the two souls, which in the past has never been: the one that promotes the great event and the one that develops the basic offer, that it concerns the most disadvantaged places, the social and urban peripheries, the people with disabilities and the less well-suited families, with contributions that allow to make sports to those with less chance. This inevitably goes through schools, which, contrary to Anglo-Saxon culture, are not a place where sport has consecrated itself. We are investing a lot of resources to improve school sports and reorganized the Youth Games, the competition between Italian students who had interrupted ten years ago. We are convinced that if you do well sports at school, you continue to do it outside. A model that we are slowly expanding also to the university system, which is certainly not like the American one, where the NCAA culture is very strong, but it is what we are doing to make the sports base strong and contrast the sedentary and social solitude.
L’articolo Andrea Abodi and the future of Italian sport, from Euro 2032 stages to schools proviene da IlNewyorkese.
