Finally the torture is over. The worst season of Virtus Roma of this millennium ended with the only one possible result, given the bad conditions that, during the year, gathered gloomily. It is fair to clarify from the beginning that nothing happened by chance or because of a fluky coincidence or of a difficult event to deal with. Therefore, Lottomatica was not excluded from the play-off because of yesterday defeat, that was predictable, on the field of a Montepaschi Siena very absent-minded: it was a 83-73, there is little to say about it. It was a balanced match in the first three parts, before the decisive acceleration of the hosts, who had appeared imprecise for long time (too many banal lost balls, 18 in total, instead of the average 15), distracted, less efficient than usual in defence. They had not leave the licence for Euroleague, automatic consequence of the exclusion from the first eight in the ranking, because Mens Sana itself “gently gave” (so many for the supposed and acclaimed invincibility) important points to Dinamo Sassari just one week ago. They will not stand and see the winner because Teramo could not win in Bologna (although by a little), or because Cremona had not so much power against the main motivations of a brilliant Sassari, or because Milano chose to lose in Pesaro to conquer the right to enter in the continental league excluding Roma. In effect this talk/alibi is believable for the clubs, although it comes also from not reliable information, as this single match was irrelevant for the future of the Capitoline team. And the organisation or the referees have no responsibility, as many times they claimed in order to hide their own mistakes, regardless of that ambiguous foul against Washington, only a few moments before the end, in the essential away match in Sardinia, hosted by Dinamo. Basically it is not an astral conspiracy, or because of the penalties, of the crisis of stock exchange or of 9/11. On the contrary the failure is due to a nonsense management, to a roster built randomly – starting from an alleged Italian style, with Boniccioli as a coach, and ended with a Slavic predominance (of players who came, for several reasons, only according to non-planned casualness: Dasic, Dedovic and Gordic for example) with the regime of Filipovski – and never corrected by the administration (Tanjevic is only the tip of the iceberg) who built it up late, who wasted enrolments (Traoré, Iannilli, Tonolli) and who consciously ignored the weak points (Washington, Traoré, Smith) instead of reasoning on a way to substitute them. This management only led to a peak what was already evident in basketball Roma: repeated mistakes that, given the guilty repetitions, can not be referable to a unique constant presidential.

Toti era, as it was already clear, is so ended on the field. It is a finished stage, no chance of appeal. It is not so important that this decade can not be remembered pleasantly (despite some potential good peaks thanks to Parker, Hawkins and Bodiroga). Usually, when a cycle ends, the joys and the successes given to the supporters of a team are to be celebrated with pride and fond nostalgia. Even about that there is little to add. Virtus Roma loves being differente, because the positive memories lower in front of a limitless ocean of mistakes and sloppiness, which are the main reasons of the chronic lack in successes. Lottomatica of engineer Lamaro will be famous only because it has been the eternal unconcluded, because of its unexpressed potential, and of a leadership always extolled and never reached. Money has been spent, this is true, but often in a wrong way and more often in an incoherent manner, limiting the expenses when a little more could be enough to built the right formation, or decreasing the budget right when it was time to increase it. A project has been flaunted, but no-one ever really built it. In the media they sold a winning product, when in reality there was nothing done and there was no packaging. It is as if a massive shelf has been built, but nothing has never been done in order to put some real Cups (possibly not the championships of San Martino in Lupari or of Sant’Ambrogio) on it, with proud, to show also to basketball Italy a superiority that luckily the Eternal City conquered definitely during its incomparable history. And this is certainly not thanks to people like Mr Claudio Toti or to all the team of (bad) advisors he loved to be surrounded with, during these years to be forgotten.

N.B. President Toti, apparently for the first time, may have understood his responsibily (and his staff’s too) and asked for some time to think about what happened, as the site Sportando.com reported. It is important, in this moment, to help the engineer with his thoughts, so that they were correct both in the starting conditions and in the conclusions. And so, although Roman supporter has never contested him in the last few months but lively encouraged him both in the home match with Bologna, and even after the exclusion in Siena, the only possible advice about his future choices seems to be the following: giving up. Demission, cession and farewell. He should accept he failed and, afterwards, move aside. He should pass on that, to give back some dignity to the team, to the supporters and, why not, to himself.

(Translated by Antonella Giudici)