Has the Kings League Italy already failed on the first matchday? The gap with the editions in other countries is too wide
This morning, the recap email for the first day of Kings League Italy arrived from the Italian press office. It reads: "Kings League restarts: from Lamine Yamal's penalty in Spain to the penalty derby between Bobo Vieri and Melissa Satta." A simple sentence, but also meaningful of everything that doesn’t work in the Kings League Italy project: an initiative born with the idea of bringing a younger audience closer to football, but which ends up including personalities like Bobo Vieri and Melissa Satta, outdated and therefore belonging to older generations. Moreover, among the wildcards – extra players outside the normal roster, who can be former professionals, football influencers, or prominent media figures – one would expect elements capable of adding spectacle and quality to the matches, bringing experience and charisma. In theory, at least: considering the often questionable physical condition of many of them – last year we were present during Radja Nainggolan's debut, and his best play was smoking an entire e-cigarette during warm-up rather than bonding with his new teammates.
This year’s wildcards, so far, are Radja Nainggolan, Ciccio Caputo, but above all Hachim Mastour. A name that, when compared with Lamine Yamal – present in the last day of the Spanish version – perfectly summarizes the gap between the condition and status of the Kings League across countries. As we already reported in an article last year, a similar comparison emerged when putting Kings League Italy against the French edition, where in just one day Jules Koundé and Mike Maignan were physically present. Kings League was born as a model that must focus on aspirational figures for new generations, and the point is simple: Jules Koundé, Mike Maignan, Lamine Yamal (both for their incredible football skills and their out-of-the-box personalities, they are; Nainggolan, Caputo, Mastour, and Diletta Leotta, presented as the first female president of the competition with team D-Power, are not at all).
The same problems as last season
From this very first glimpse of the new season of Kings League Italy, in short, the same critical issues that marked last season, the first season of the competition, emerge. We refer you once again to last year’s article, because it could literally be copy-pasted, but we will still provide a brief summary in this new critique of a sports competition that seems to have as its goal compromising an already fragile future for young Italians trying to get passionate about football.
And let’s start with the concept of nostalgia: even this year, the very young followers of Kings League Italy will be forced to elect Bomber Picci as their idol, a footballer stereotype that theoretically embodies everything negative about provincial football: unsportsmanlike behavior, sloppiness, and lack of respect – we still remember his endless complaints during the third day of last season. The big striker stereotype is outdated, yet it remains central in the Italian version of the tournament, a tournament that, we repeat, should aim to bring new generations closer to football.
But we cannot put all the blame on the Kings League organization – that is, those responsible for artistically directing the competition, hiring at least decent footballers for this context, and ensuring they possess a coolness and freshness even higher than that of the creators playing the matches. Thus, the issue of a malfunctioning star system in Italy emerges, lacking character, but also – and here the responsibility falls again on the higher-ups of Kings League – a limited weight and influence of institutional roles, despite the renewal of Claudio Marchisio (Head of Competition) and Zlatan Ibrahimovic (president of the entire league).
The question naturally arises: has Kings League Italy already failed on the first day of the new season? Last year’s pattern seems to repeat itself in exactly the same form, and as of now, even sparking cautious optimism seems really impossible.
