An appearance that comes after sports have started to speak, or rather after the media started writing about what has been mumbled every day for years in the corridors of federations or clubs and sports institutions.
And this conference that left everyone amazed cannot go unanalyzed, not only for what was said but for what was not said.
Some coincidences are acceptable, but the timing of this conference was not so coincidental. The conference was held just a few hours after some articles that were making noise on the portals, about the way sports are being administered. Naturally, it is not difficult to understand that these 2 events are related to each other. On the contrary, all this creates the impression that the conference was more a reaction to public pressure than a planned communication to address the problems, and why not the merits for the results.
Unfortunately, to these socialists, criticism, even when it is healthy, seems like aggression.
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However, time never lies. And if we dwell a little on coincidence, there could be no greater coincidence than that on this very day the positive response from Europe came, after a long ordeal of usual European bureaucracies, for the sponsorship law. Let’s leave it at that, this is a positive development that the sports community has been waiting for for a long time.
A positive development that must be supported, but that cannot be used as a veil to hide the problems that weigh on Albanian sports. Because sports do not live only with laws, but also need dialogue, cooperation and trust.
If there was a moment to talk seriously about the future of Albanian sport, it was precisely this. To explain how the law will work, what impact it will have on federations, clubs, grassroots sport and private investments. None of this was in the minister’s speech.
Returning to the conference, even though Gonxha has one of the clearest articulations among senior politicians, he did not answer the most important question that has been circulating in the sports community for a long time: why has the ministry (government) chosen not to build a normal relationship with sports institutions?
The conference did not talk about the relationship with the NAC, the federations, the sports leaders, the lack of joint tables, the institutional dialogue that has been replaced by public statements.
In a normal country, the minister of sports is the partner of the federations, the bridge connecting the government with the world of sports. The minister listens, negotiates and builds joint policies with the real actors of sports.
But in Albania they want to cover the sun with a sieve and the ministry and sports are two different realities: one produces statements, the other produces results or even problems that no one listens to.
And this is precisely where the minister’s conference failed, because it was not organized to listen or even talk about sports, but rather was an outlet to respond to the noise created by some critical writings.
If this is not true, there is an opportunity to prove it: let the minister sit at an open table with the Olympic Committee, with the federations, with the clubs, the coaches and athletes and the media. Without a script, like the one that ironically took place today at the prime minister’s office. Without a selection of guests, without selected questions and not just a monologue.
Sports today do not need conferences to wash away criticism, even if it comes from a few sporadic articles on portals. Sports need institutions that communicate before crises emerge and need an open-minded minister who does not see criticism as an attack or as an enemy. If criticism is more disturbing than the problems that have produced it, then the attention is in the wrong direction.
And in closing, since it was a press conference and there were no questions, let’s ask the only question that should come out of this conference:
Against whom is this war open?