A love never fully blossomed, a difficult and tense relationship between Federciclismo and the Professional Cycling League, between President Cordiano Dagnoni and League President Roberto Pella. Silvano Antonelli, a measured and thoughtful man who has traversed the roads and avenues of cycling, building bridges, sends us a calm reflection that we are pleased to share.

A Professional League that unusually invites the Regional Committees of the FCI to a video conference on December 15, as a first step towards an auspicious "structured confrontation" to team up in promoting cycling at the territorial level during professional races, and a Federal President who, a moment later, asks the same presidents to decline the invitation in the name of "the mandate we received from our readers". If this is not entirely unexpected, it is certainly unprecedented and worthy of reflection.

On one side, a LCP with its dynamic and political president Pella, and unusually financial resources, wants to support potential local initiatives during the "Regions Cup" races, promoting territories, youth cycling, and turning it into an "educational, social, and cultural support, with virtuous paths together with schools and associations".

On the other side, the federal president Dagnoni reminds regional presidents (and especially the LCP) that "the federal sports policy guidelines, through the involvement of the entire territory, particularly regarding youth activities and promotion, are the exclusive prerogative of the Federal Council".

On one side, a League moving resources and initiatives for cycling, also due to funding received (uniquely) directly from the Government, but needing peripheral structures it doesn't have to "implement" them; on the other, an FCI with all the necessary structures, but with modest resources and more than one difficulty in fully deploying its institutional and representative potential for the announced objectives at the beginning of the new four-year period, leaving some space undoubtedly to others.

National cycling, with its fragilities and uncertainties of perspective, needs everything except a role confrontation between FCI and League, which would be detrimental to effectiveness and the movement's overall prestige, and humiliating for those, like regional presidents, who are caught between offers of help on one side and an invitation (obligation) to refuse on the other.

Obviously, everything that happens is the consequence of positive or negative actions, risks or weaknesses, which each can attribute to the side they prefer, but faced with such an unprecedented clash, minimizing is impossible. If not stopped in time, it's difficult to predict where this might end. Beyond the "substances" at play, the fact remains that the Federation is one, and deviation from this is not permitted. Federal Statute teaches.

Passion is not enough here, nor is tolerance. Projective intelligence and willingness to confront are needed. Dagnoni had already complained about a League structured in some ways speculatively to the FCI, particularly for certain commissions, with possible action conflicts. But today, again Dagnoni, with his explicit call for the League to return to the boundaries of its statutory prerogatives and for regional presidents not to betray federal hierarchies, the "casus belli" is effectively served, with risks of a next season full of difficulties, albeit unjust and harmful. The subjects entitled to resolve this impasse are evident. It is up to them to recognize the absolute delicacy of the situation, bringing wisdom, will, and transparency of intent into play. And much political capacity, after having politically arrived at this point.

Weaknesses and forcings, wherever they have manifested, must be recovered in the irrepressible necessity of not dispersing anything that individual federal components know how to produce and on the evidence that irreparable and prolonged fractures cannot be part of any mandate received from voters. Therefore, today, there is only a first and indispensable act to be performed: that the League suspend the December 15 initiative. Removing breath even from those malicious who think of a more calculated than involuntary "stumble". A suspension, to give everyone time to better understand what is happening and how to best address it. Without dragging, avoiding in the meantime acts that determine "deaths" and "prisoners" among intermediate level managers, up to those of societies that at the territorial level are interested in promoting cycling and its values, also thanks to arrivals and departures of professional races.

Come on, at this point, "making a team" is no longer just a necessity. It's a duty.