It Should Just Be News When Zamparini Isn’t Raving About Something

By: Martha | March 24th, 2007

Crazy Zamp. The thing that’s most frustrating about Palermo ~~resident psycho~~ president Maurizio Zamparini is that about 60% of what he says actually stems from very reasonable concerns; often, he’s talking about problems that are at the heart of calcio, and really do need to be addressed. HOWEVER. The fact that he insists on couching them in language that makes him sound like a raving lunatic, and repeatedly proves himself entirely unwilling to take responsibility for or even acknowledge his periodic bouts of wildly inappropriate behavior makes it almost impossible for anyone to take him seriously. So what he’s doing, essentially, is shooting himself in the foot, guaranteeing over and over again that he’ll never be able to create the changes he’s seeking, if only because on a daily basis he’s giving the administration of the football league an excuse to overlook hiim. It’s sort of a hideous Catch-22, really: He feels ignored, so he yells louder and makes more outrageous statements which, in turn, render him even more of a laughingstock, and assure that he will continue to be ignored.

Whew, sorry. Anyway, this is on my mind because yes, you guessed it, he’s at it again.

In a press conference yesterday, Zamp was in full attack mode, ripping the league, the financial structure that favors big clubs and, of course, Fiorentina. To wit:

“I have lost faith in the system, but I hope that I can be proved wrong. I don’t want to give the people false hope, as not only can this side not fight for the Scudetto in future, I think it would already be a great success to challenge Roma for fourth place … Trying to battle it out with the big clubs means risking … [bankruptcy]. When their budget for the season is at around £170m and ours is £40m, it’ll be very difficult to change things.”

And, you know, he’s right: It’s almost impossible for small clubs to compete for the title in Italy, at least outside of isolated miracle seasons. But when he combines that sort of salient argument with his by-now traditional threat to leave football and a wingnut defense of his slurs against Adrian Mutu (”What was done to me, after an affectionate jibe at Mutu, was ignoble. I was even accused of being racist, but that is the way some journalists from the north do things. They are facetious and stretch stories to suit their needs.” *gag*), he makes it awfully hard to only hear the non-crazy parts.