Damiano Tommasi has won one of the most important matches of his life. This 48-year-old former Italian soccer player will be the new mayor of Verona after his civic list supported by the entire center-left has managed to snatch this conservative bastion from the right. He has prevailed in the second turn to the candidate of Brothers of Italy and the League, the until now mayor Federico Sboarina.
The second round of the Italian municipal elections has given good news to a center-left that has also won in Parma, Alessandria or Monza, where Silvio Berlusconi lives. But of all of them, Tommasi's victory is the most significant. Verona has been largely ruled by the right since 1994, and in recent years has been noted for its notorious anti-abortion crusades and for being a national laboratory for the far right.
"This city has been waiting for this moment for a long time," celebrated the future mayor. The former midfielder has not given a single rally, but he has built his campaign by walking around Verona and talking to his citizens. He has vindicated his proposal based on the contents, preferring to listen to attack opponents. “I am happy because we have managed to talk about politics without attacking, insulting or denigrating. We have won in another way”, he said, during the victory celebration in the city of Romeo and Juliet, but also the place where Benito Mussolini decided to reconvert his fascist party in 1943.
Tommasi was born in a town of less than 15,000 inhabitants in the province of Verona, and started out playing football for his local team, Hellas Verona, helping them reach Serie A. He was then one of Roma's late-20s midfielders. the 1990s and early 2000s, winning the Giallorosso team's last Scudetto. He was part of the Italian team that played in the World Cups in Korea and Japan in 2002. After leaving Roma, he joined Levante between 2006 and 2008, and finished his years with the ball in China and San Marino. When he retired he became the representative of the Italian soccer players' union.
This is his first experience in politics, but it sure doesn't surprise his former teammates. When he played he was already seen as a committed footballer, ready to confront the fans for criticizing racism or violence. Hellas Verona, in fact, is known for its ultra fans who sing racist chants and have come to praise Hitler. “The working-class soccer player”, they called him after, after a major injury, he proposed to continue playing, earning the minimum wage for soccer players when he was 31 years old.
With a civic list supported by a broad representation of the Italian center-left parties, the 5-Star Movement (M5E) and centrist forces such as Azione or Europa Tommasi, it has managed to beat Sboarina with 53.4% of the votes, which has stopped in 46.6%.
Sboarina has paid for the internal fracture suffered by the Italian right, which has not even managed to unite in this city since Berlusconi's Forza Italia presented its own candidate, Flavio Tosi. In the background there is also the fierce competition between Matteo Salvini, leader of the League, and Giorgia Meloni, of Brothers of Italy, for the leadership of the coalition that, if everything goes as expected, could win the next national elections in 2023. Verona It can be a symbol of hope for Enrico Letta, the general secretary of the Democratic Party who wants to replicate this great alliance on a national scale and try to contest the general elections next year on the right.
A practicing Catholic and father of six children, Damiano, as everyone calls him in his city, refuses to be pigeonholed as a person of the left or the right. He has cooked his triumph over a slow fire, organizing debates and meetings for a year, talking about the environment and proposals for young people. Theirs have celebrated this victory as if it were a World Cup. The miracle of the outsider who does politics without insulting.
