A summer of worries and transfer market
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The Sports Newspaper - The Portrait of Bonanza
Transfer market dreams, inexplicable injuries, and dashed expectations, where anxiety mixes with the dark allure of a Chinese puppet and the dashed hopes of suspended players. Writing about summer, then, becomes a way to distract oneself, and perhaps, to calm a little the turmoil that comes when everything is about to end.
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Dear summer, I'm writing to distract myself a bit. Transfer news is coming thick and fast, justifying a thousand acrobatic dreams. Everyone's looking for big, uninhibited center forwards, with the age-old habit of heading balls with powerful strikes, while simultaneously swaying like flowers in the wind. Strong and light, then. One of these, Lukaku, broke his leg before he even started. Looking at him in photos and some training footage, he seemed even more imposing and bloated. Maybe it was that, or a natural inclination due to age, or fate, who knows. In Rome, meanwhile, a player who wasn't bloated at all, Bailey, got hurt without even trying too hard. I wonder how anyone could even think of buying a player like that, constantly injured, without considering the consequences. Gasperini bristles when asked about the transfer market, and his face tenses, his smile faltering beneath blazing eyes. He needs a strong team right away; he can't even imagine starting slowly, only to hear old, unpleasant remarks again. I think that's understandable.
But there's still time, dear summer, about ten days to fix it, then the transfer market goes on hiatus. In the meantime, I'm reading about this new craze, that of a little Chinese doll called Labubu, the same spelling as Lukaku (a side note). Unlike the striker, who is nevertheless beautiful in his infinite size, little Labubu is not handsome. He's described online as an object with an alternative, gothic charm, with what that might mean, which is absolutely nothing. Yet people line up to buy him, even in the sunshine. If I try to speculate on the reason for his success, I can't immediately find it. However, rationalizing it, I think it's due to the fact that he represents restlessness so well.
Here, dear summer, is the same anxiety that grips us when you're over, and we return to our usual lives, without swimming in the sea or hiking in the mountains. That anxiety we should flee from, yet instead attracts us, like violence, a shouted word, a shady or simply wrong story. Labubu, like the restless Lookman (pictured in the Getty Images), small, yes, but with a "splitting" smile, as poor Bova would say. He thought his club would put him up for sale, just like any other Labubu, imagining the line outside his shop. He imagined scoring goals for new jerseys and within new boundaries. He imagined himself, like the little doll, hanging from some young star's backpack. He found himself alone, in Zingonia, tiredly signing autographs, in the middle of solitary training sessions, with the nerve of someone who tried to say enough, only to then swallow his words again, as had happened exactly a year ago. Generating that essential embarrassment that's so fashionable these days. And thank goodness I'm writing to you, dear summer, so I can distract myself a bit. Hoping that this way, my anxiety will go away.
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