Suárez's farcical examination is the quintessence of the worst Italian spirit

The staging of the university and the football player to obtain the certificate and passport is one of those concrete facts that kill any effort to rise from the clichés that hurt us most

Luis Suárez after the examination in Perugia of the September 17 (photo: Twitter / @ sspina) The bad story of the combined exam for Luis Suárez is the quintessence of Italianness. Of its worst side of course, the grotesque and disheartening side that generations of comedians in the last century have helped to crystallize. Not only that: it is also one of those concrete facts that in one fell swoop kill any effort to rise from the clichés that hurt us most. In short, to understand, in the parts of the chapter false invalids, citizenship income with SUVs or employees who stamp and go shopping. An interview organized for the 33-year-old striker of Barcelona by the University for Foreigners of Perugia, from what was known about him until recently, an institution worthy of a certain credibility, is enough to glue us even more strongly the ugly appointment of fake Italians and huddle, always ready to override the rules especially if there is someone important and a lot of money involved.

Yes, because the story of the farcical interview with the important candidate who "does not utter a word" unearthed by the Perugia prosecutor, recently led by Raffaele Cantone (he went badly at the Pistolero, he crossed paths with one more soon than him), promises to expand. As Corriere della Sera explains today, in fact, there would be at least three contacts between Maria Turco, one of the Juventus lawyers who works in the lawyer Luigi Chiappero's office, and the director general of the university Simone Olivieri, in which the Juventus club would have in somehow promised to open a preferential channel for his players who in the future would have to take the Italian exam to obtain a passport. Exactly the same pattern followed with Suárez who, by virtue of the Friulian origins of his Italo-Uruguayan wife Sofia Balbi, was trying to take citizenship in order to be hired by Juventus. And in any case, in general making oneself more attractive to almost all the European championships (in Spain it is considered community in an indirect way thanks to his wife), avoiding the count of non-EU citizens in pink, which can be at most two. To do this, and complete the administrative process, he needed the attestation that he had reached the B1 level of language skills in Italian.

The Perugia university has denied everything, confirming "the correctness and transparency of procedures followed ”and trusting“ that this will emerge clearly at the end of the checks in progress ”. Those checks are called investigations and would see the director Giuliana Grego Bolli, Olivieri himself, Stefania Spina, Lorenzo Rocca and Cinzia Camagna investigated for false ideology and disclosure of office secrets. More could therefore come from the in-depth analysis of the agreements with Juve and from the in-depth analysis of the main investigation on the university budget, from which more than three million euros are missing and that the current administration, in recent months, attributed to the "poor management and omissiva ”of those who had headed the university before them. But this is another story.

The interceptions do not leave too many doubts both on the origin of the staging and on its operational management in the previous days, on the emergency procedure activated, on the early session from 22 to 17 by moving also other candidates and on the other details. In the first case, in particular, pressure and further crimes also seem to be taking shape, given that the lawyer would have guaranteed to direct all non-EU immigrants from the Bianconeri orbit to be naturalized at the University of Perugia, evidently expecting preferential treatment in exchange. We will see. As we will see, on the sporting side, how much and how Juventus were aware of the verbal agreements. Without forgetting of course also the position of Suárez, who certainly cannot come out of it as an unconscious puppet. An intercepted teacher also explains: "It's a farce exam to get him certified: he shouldn't, he must, he will pass, because with 10 million a season of salary you can't blow them because he doesn't have B1".

Here the opening theme is linked again. It is not a question of being scandalized by a combined examination, because probably underneath that of Suárez there are, throughout Italy, very similar procedures on a thousand different fronts. Universities included. However outlines and details of the story - the arrival in a beach look with the private plane welcomed like a hero by fans and reporters, the photo posed with the teachers who had "examined" him, allowing him to parrot those four agreed nonsense , the max salary at stake, the wiretapping worthy of a Checco Zalone film - they tell in a scandalously ruthless way how things still work in Italy.

The story is all the more fundamentally irrelevant to the fate of this country in the midst of a pandemic - we really have much more to think about - all the more it leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Could it be that teachers and administrators of a university with an important history, moreover aware that they would have had the spotlight, have made themselves available to such humiliation? Here, humiliation is the correct term: Suárez or others, these news events, apparently minor, concentrate on them an irreparable destructive charge towards the credibility of the country and the civic sense of the Italians. Of the youngest and, as seen by the protagonists, of the greatest.