Taking off the runner-up medal: bad manners of a sore loser
We are reaching the end of the season in many championships and many finals are being held. Different sports: football, basketball, handball and others.
The European Nations Cup and the Olympic Games are coming up soon. This Saturday we have the Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester City.
I focus on the Europa League final between Manchester United and Villarreal, where we saw again the ugly gesture of taking off the medal or not letting the person who is giving it to you offer it to the person holding it to pick it up.
I think that the "fair play" that FIFA and UEFA proclaim so much in this detail is conspicuous by its absence. But they tolerate it year after year.
It is so disrespectful that I don't know where to begin to describe it.
First it is disrespectful to the person who is giving it to you. Secondly, it's disrespectful to the opponents who have won you the final.
It is a lack of respect for the entire audience in the stadium and those watching the show on television.
And above all it is disrespectful to all the fellow athletes who competed in the competition with other teams and did not reach the final.
The attitude of the loser in attending the presentation of the cup to the winner on the field and not going to the dressing room is welcomed, but no one criticises the rude attitude of taking the medal.
A gesture that suggests that the medal is a piece of shit, with apologies. A medal and a second place that would make 99% of the athletes very happy and the fans the same.
The bad thing is that these attitudes are imitated by young people who in other competitions at different levels are adopting this unsportsmanlike and rude gesture.
That is not what sportsmanship is all about. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose, and respect must come before all else. In a few years' time, won't these sportsmen and women feel proud to have reached a final?
What they convey is a feeling of sore loser and little sporting spirit.
In the Olympics these attitudes do not usually occur, but in the Champions and Europa League it happens every year to the point that it has become routine: if you lose the final you take your medal away or do not let them impose it on you. It's a disgrace.
This is not what UEFA is for, this sinister body is there to keep most of the tickets and to squander in each city a large part of the resources generated by this sport, which, if they continue like this, will be a spectacle, but not a sporting one.