The Stadio Olimpico was full of tears on Sunday night, as their legendary captain Francesco Totti retired at the age of 40, leaving a legendary career behind. As almost all football fans know, for the last 20 years, Totti was Roma and Roma was Totti. They were such inseparable concepts that even I, who has no emotional bond with Roma, felt deep sorrow watching Totti bid a farewell to crying fans. Those cries meant more than showing gratitude to a legendary captain. They were also a mourning a generation's golden era, who grew up playing with PlayStations, football manager games and football itself in street, with Totti and all the other stars of the early 21st century. Now, with Totti gone, football officially entered a new era.
I saw the distinction between the new era of football and the old era, which we 90s kids adore, most clearly when Totti was put on for Mohammed Salah in his last game. Against Genoa, Salah was very efficient with his pace and agility, but he had no fancy dribbles, curved shots or right-on-the-spot passes. He disturbed the opponent's defense with his physique more than his technique, it just seemed like there was no spoiled child in him, who grew up in the streets imitating Maradona or Pele. For a generation who grew up with Pirlo, Ronaldo, Zidane and Figo, this football style is highly unusual and pretty much boring, only if you are not imitating Gattuso.
However, when Totti was on after 10 minutes in the second half, it was obvious that the Totti we know never made it after 2010. His physique was nowhere near the young players surrounding him and all the characteristics that we love as the 90s generation seemed too spoiled for the nature of this Serie A game. Even I found myself getting angry at his slow moves although I convinced myself before the game that I would only watch this game for the sweet memory of Totti, but nothing else.
Now, I do not intend to go deeper into the reasons why we have become so result-oriented, I believe sociologists and economists would do a much better job than me. Nevertheless, as a football columnist and a philosophy student it seems obvious to me that just as how the world entered a new era after 2008, football also changed drastically in that time. As I discussed in my "Can dominant football be dominant again" piece, football is gradually losing its sweet flavors, and becoming a game that only the winner enjoys.
But maybe this transformation is trying to tell us something, that there could be another way to respond to the changing nature of football. I know that today's football can no longer work with Paolo Maldini's or Ryan Giggs' style, but rather than settling our strategies on fear, we should be as selfless as possible in a collective action that aims to produce high quality football. It may sounds like a utopia, but football is played with 11 players and the most fun and effective way, in my opinion, is to make it a game in which 11 players act like one. Spoiled individualism is gone, and will never come back, but we can still make this game enjoyable, by learning to play to together.
