Football is a mirror.
And last night, that mirror cracked wide open at San Siro. Pierre Kalulu barely grazed — probably didn't even touch — Alessandro Bastoni. The Inter defender crumpled as if struck by lightning. Referee La Penna sprinted over, flashed a second yellow, then the red. Kalulu was gone. And Bastoni? He celebrated. Not quietly, not sheepishly. He celebrated vistosamente, quasi sguaiato — brazenly, almost obscenely.
I watched this from my wheelchair in Tirana, and my blood ran cold. Not because of the football result. Because I recognised something far older than Serie A.
The Image That Won't Leave
Let me paint the scene one more time, because it matters. Kalulu reaches in, a slight contact — or none at all. Bastoni throws himself down. The whistle blows. A man who did nothing wrong walks off the pitch, and a man who cheated pumps his fist in the air like a conqueror .
Inter won 3-2, with Zielinski scoring at the 90th minute. Juventus were furious. Chiellini and Comolli raged publicly: "Where was Rocchi? Things must change" .
But here's the thing — they won't change. Not because the rules can't handle it. Because the culture celebrates it.
Why Bastoni Gets Away With It
The regulations are absurdly specific. TV evidence — prova tv — can only be used to punish simulation in three cases: when a dive leads to a penalty, when it causes a direct red card, or in cases of gravely unsporting conduct .
Kalulu's red card came from a second yellow, not a direct expulsion. That loophole is all Bastoni needs. He'll face no retrospective ban. He'll walk free. As la Repubblica put it plainly: "Bastoni finirà per farla franca" — Bastoni will get away with it .
The old prova tv system, before VAR made it nearly obsolete, used to catch divers after the weekend. Elbows, violent acts, blasphemy, and yes, simulation — all ended up on the sports judge's desk . VAR was supposed to fix everything in real time. It fixed nothing here.
Furbizia: The Virtue That Isn't
Now, let me take you somewhere deeper. Because this isn't just about one footballer gaming a referee. This is about furbizia — the Italian cult of cunning.
In Italy, and in very few other countries, cunning is treated as a virtue worthy of respect, esteem, and sometimes outright admiration . The furbo — the clever one, the sly operator — is someone who wriggles out of trouble, dodges traps, reaches his goals through ingenious tricks. He's a winner. Or so the story goes.
I'm a physicist. I studied in Bologna and Milan. I spent an Erasmus semester in Istanbul. I've had my skull opened for deep brain stimulation surgery. I know something about the difference between genuine intelligence and cheap deception. They are not the same thing.
The source text I'm drawing from here — a brilliant cultural essay on furbizia — states it plainly: the abuse of cunning has degraded its value in a society where the old justifications (war, famine, oppression) have largely faded, and where human intelligence has expressed itself through scientific and technological progress .
Science beat cunning. But cunning didn't get the memo.
Where the Foxes Learned Their Tricks
Italy's history explains the origin, if not the excuse. For centuries, the peninsula was carved up — Austrian domination in the north, Bourbon rule in the south, Franco-Papal control in the centre. The country was poor, fragmented, and powerless . The Risorgimento after 1870, Garibaldi's campaigns, the breach of Porta Pia — these stitched together a political nation, but brigandage and regional poverty persisted .
The First World War was a bloodbath. Mussolini's Second World War was no triumph. The economic boom of the 1950s burned bright and brief .
Poverty spread across the territory for decades, especially in the South. And from that poverty grew the mafias — not as random evil, but as a survival strategy rooted in a secular culture that had fallen behind, where cunning became the only available weapon against starvation and injustice .
The concept of the famiglia mafiosa still represents an alternative for the powerless — those who cannot survive except through furbizia .
Furbi and Fessi: The Two Italies
In 1921, Giuseppe Prezzolini described the Italian population in his Storia degli Italiani as divided into two categories: the furbi (the cunning) and the fessi (the fools) .
The great comic actor Totò embodied this division perfectly .
And here's the painful irony — the essay I'm citing uses a devastating metaphor. In Homer's Odyssey, the cunning Ulysses defeated the Trojans with the trick of the wooden horse. But Italians, despite all their furbizia, have remained losers, poor, and increasingly foolish. The truly cunning are only the wealthy and clever .
That sentence hit me like a punch. Because I've seen this dynamic my entire life. I was born in Albania in 1986. My family emigrated to Italy in 1991 so I could receive medical treatment for dystonia. Italy gave me an education, surgeries, a life. But Italy also showed me — again and again — that the system rewards the cheat.
The Eternal Pinocchio
The essay draws an extraordinary parallel. It's the eternal Pinocchio living in the Italian soul — the belief that you can obtain easily what is actually difficult .
The furbo is a liar. And like Pinocchio, his nose grows in public. He leaves his honest companions behind and walks off with the Cat and the Fox, who promise that burying coins will sprout a tree loaded with gold . You know how that story ends.
But who reads The Adventures of Pinocchio anymore? Benedetto Croce said the puppet was carved from the wood of humanity itself. If nobody reads Collodi, imagine how few read Croce .
Only a fesso — a fool — reads both. And recognises the "furbetti del quartierino," the neighbourhood schemers, the cat and the fox, the wolf and the lamb.
There's Always Someone More Cunning
The essay's final twist is the darkest. The furbo's vocation eventually frays. Something goes wrong. He realises — too late — that there's always someone more cunning, often the very person he'd dismissed as a fool.
It's like the pipers of the mountain who went to play and got played. There's always someone purer who purges you, and always someone cleverer who... well, the Italian is more colourful than I can translate in polite company.
Bastoni celebrated last night as if he'd conquered Troy. He won't be punished. The loophole protects him. The culture applauds him.
But the image stays. And images, unlike regulations, don't have loopholes.
What Actually Changes Things
The essay proposes a path forward, and I agree with it — not punishment alone, but the elevation of social trust . Institutions that are more flexible, less bureaucratic, more willing to build a different identity in the population. Schools and families spreading values based not on cunning but on intelligence and knowledge .
Prizes for the best students. Recognition for creative workers, for volunteers, for those who save lives and help the elderly .
I run FreeAstroScience, a science and culture group with tens of thousands of followers. I founded it because I believe — stubbornly, perhaps naively — that science is the antidote to furbizia. Science doesn't care how sly you are. The universe doesn't negotiate. Gravity doesn't accept bribes. A photon doesn't dive in the penalty box.
Is this naive? The essay asks the same question: Ingenuità?
I'm simplifying deep cultural and sociological concepts here for a general audience, because I think clarity matters more than academic precision. The roots of furbizia run through centuries of poverty, domination, and survival. Understanding that doesn't mean accepting it.
A Final Word from My Wheelchair
I've survived multiple surgeries. I had a deep brain stimulation device implanted in 2011 and removed in 2018. I live with a movement disorder that put me in this chair before I could walk properly. I earned my degrees. I crossed borders. I built communities.
Not once did I cheat.
Not once did I dive.
And I'm still here. Still standing — metaphorically, at least. The furbi of the world will always exist. Bastoni will play next weekend unpunished. The loophole will remain. The culture will shrug.
But every time a young person chooses honesty over cunning, chooses knowledge over tricks, chooses to read Collodi and Croce instead of imitating the Cat and the Fox — the mirror gets a little cleaner.
Never give up. Not on the pitch. Not in life. And never, ever, on the truth.
Gerd Dani is the President of Free AstroScience, a science and cultural group. He holds a degree in Astronomy from the University of Bologna and a Master's in Physics from the University of Milan.
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