BatiGol Weekly 223: Super Taranta!

By now, you’ve probably all heard about the leaked plans for a European Superleague that would reach into the biggest national championships in the continent and pluck the biggest teams (plus AC Milan) to create the sort of monstrosity that wouldn’t be out of place on Doctor Moreau’s island. While it’s not exactly astonishing that the sentient slime molds at FIFA, UEFA, and in the back offices of these mega clubs are quietly working at a level of greed and solipsism that makes Ozymandias look restrained, far be it from us to join the nigh-universal chorus of disapproval. In fact, we’d like to suggest creating any number of other Super-things.

1. Tuscan Superleague

Yeah, Fiorentina can play hardball too, suckers. Ditching Serie A and forming a new tournament with heavy hitters like Empoli, Livorno, Arezzo, Carrarese, Real Forte Dei Marme-Querceta, CS Lebowski, and would guarantee the Viola at least, like, a trophy every five years or so. Due to the geographical proximity, all visiting teams will have to travel exclusively by 30-person bicycle, and the players have to hydrate during matches with the finest Super Tuscan wines rather than with water. Gotta get that extra super.

2. Ficus SuperLeague

You may not know this, but the ficus business is a high stakes, cutthroat free-for-all which you can never win; you can only hope to stay on top for as long as possible. Because of taciturnity innate to anyone who’s really born to grow this noble tree, the public isn’t really aware just how exciting it is to watch your favorite agricultural/espionage experts compete with each other to produce the most suffocating strangler fig, the most musical fiddle leaf fig, or the creepiest creeper fig. I, for one, cannot imagine a more compelling television product.

3. Bad Literary Analysis SuperLeague

As the astute reader of the BGW may have gathered since I took over this thing from Lorenzo, I like reading books I’m not smart enough to understand, and I like to talk about them even though I’m not smart enough to understand them. I am not alone in this; there are many more (dozens!) like me. And who wouldn’t want to watch or read all of us yelling about whether or not Pale Fire is an allegory (it’s not) for accessing multiple personalities that go into creating a great work, or if Judge Holden from Blood Meridian is Satan, or if Thomas Pynchon is actually just a joke that Dom DeLillo’s been playing on us for decades. There’s no punchline here, other than the very existence of this blog and its asinine manager’s ramblings.

4. Worst Fanhood SuperLeague

Would you rather be trapped in a featureless steel chamber with a bunch of Trekkies arguing who’s the best captain of the Starship Enterprise (it’s Jean Luc Picard, nerds), or with a bunch of Deadheads discussing whose bootleg recording of the show at the Great Pyramids of Giza most capture the real essence of the band, man? Would you rather be bound to a stake while a bunch of Song of Ice and Fire numpties try to figure out whether Varys is an agent of the fish-people or to a bunch of Crossfit enthusiasts argue about how much their spines should bend while they do deadlifts? This world contains a lot of things, running the gamut from good to Creed, and pretty much every one of those things have fans who run the gamut from bad to just goddamn repellant. If you want to figure out which one is the worst without spending hours on Twitter or Reddit and losing whatever shreds of your humanity you yet retain, though, this is the league for you.

5. Football Blog SuperLeague

Eh, maybe not. That’d leave the Viola Nation trophy case as empty as, well, never mind.

Oh, and Gianni? Gianni Infantino? We’d like our payment for these ideas in unmarked and non-sequential Galleons, preferably delivered in plain brown paper bags. You know, the usual.

Latest news

Germán Pezzella wore a bad and racist Halloween costume this year, and we are not happy about it.

However, he was quick to realize that bad and racist Halloween costumes are not even remotely okay and has begun the process of apologizing and improving.

As we expected, the clash with AS Roma was a contest of who could flail goalwards harder. Here is all our normal coverage, including an enjoyable and prescient chat with Lord Commander brencdt of the excellent Chiesa di Totti.

In a bit of sad news, Kyle Zwiazek is leaving us after a year and a half of outstanding work. Join us in wishing him every possible success in his post-Viola Nation career.

Trayers has kicked off a new recurring feature in which he’ll be providing regular updates on Fiorentina Women’s team, which is super exciting. Here is the first one.

Must read

Even after an uneven performance on Saturday, Federico Chiesa is head and shoulders the best player in the team right now. And if the team can’t get him some help very soon, he probably won’t and shouldn’t be around for much longer.

Hey. let’s pretend that a lot of other stuff didn’t happen and take a look at how excellent Fiorentina’s captain has been on the pitch this year, because he’s been one of Serie A’s top defenders.

Comment of the week

Cheers to Tomas500 for digging out some way better writing than anything I can produce about what it’s like to be a professional footballer. Timely and topical.

That’s it for this week, folks.