As part of my cultural observation of contemporary football phenomena, I'd like to tell you about the publication of the 2025/2026 Serie A fixture list.
For those who follow a championship, the publication of the schedule provides the most important dates to mark in their diaries, from the most comfortable matches to the most competitive ones. Regardless of the reasons (technical, tactical, organizational, personal) for being interested in the schedule, this moment today has enormous performative value . In this regard, to analyze this event, I turn to Jeffrey C. Alexander's approach and his studies on the practical importance of performance.
For the American sociologist, one of the leading exponents of neo-functionalism, performance is composed of six socio-cultural components: the system of collective representation, the actors, the audience , the meaning of symbolic production, the staging, and the exercise of power. These elements function both as the objectification of the ritual, physically shaping the event, and as strategic production, projecting that event into the future.
The performance, the actors, the audience
The 2025/2026 Serie A calendar will be announced in Parma on June 6, 2025, during a festival organized by the football league itself, featuring panels , meetings, interviews, and information stands . First of all, its contextual setting allows us to recognize the system of collective representation within which the performance unfolds.
Parma is a city with a long-standing football tradition, and since its team won national and international trophies in the 1990s, the football movement has recognized its undisputed merits, despite its initial modesty. Immediately after Parma won the 2023/2024 Serie B championship, the first edition of the Serie A festival was held, definitively celebrating the promotion of the local football movement. This broad institutional collaboration has therefore brought the festival back for a second time, adding the publication of the calendar to the program.
The collective representation system for Serie A
This evening's performance took place at the Teatro Regio in Parma, a charming and distinctive venue for Italian class. The stage features regulars and newcomers. Among the regulars are four figures (two sports journalists and two former footballers), who previously performed this role at last season's calendar presentation at the RDS Multimedia Auditorium in Rome.
So, actors accustomed to this type of performance . While among those taking turns on stage, here too we find, with one exception, the same actors as last year's presentation. The audience present is first-rate. From the various shots, we see sports managers, CEOs, coaches, and other influential figures. The actors communicate and interact with them in a direct, friendly, and courteous manner. Then there are those who are observing virtually, thanks to the media, from home. In this case, the interaction is limited to messages on the video's live chat , which are not included.
Staging and the meaning of symbolic production in video
In the video , the publication of the calendar is the backdrop to the performance , Parma is the setting for this symbolic production, and the subject is the stories told by various guests about the league and its football teams. In other words, the publication of the calendar doesn't seem central to this type of encounter.
This, the fact that the calendar is not central to the hour and a half of recording, must be compensated for by a credible staging using symbolic means of production. At the beginning of the video, Verdi's 'Va, pensiero' is heard, and on stage the actors define their roles: the chairman performs welcoming, presentation, and performance management functions , the chairwoman has similar tasks, and the two former footballers represent a light-hearted football knowledge, with jokes, quips, but also detailed analyses. On stage are six sculptures of shirts of the most emblematic players of the period and a large monitor displaying the sponsors.
The role of the chairman
As mentioned, the chairman holds the key to the evening. This journalist introduces the proceedings, can give the floor, calls the executives to the stage, but above all, sets the tone for the evening. At this point, it's worth considering how, as the days unfold, the chairman emphasizes the need to speed things up because time is short. Indeed, the evening's staging serves to explain to the many spectators interested in the championship schedule that time is short.
The result of the organizational process embodied in the video's title, "Countdown" | The New Enilive 2025/26 Serie A Schedule, is the leitmotif of the entire evening. In an hour and a half, there's not even a countdown. The outcome is the structuring of Serie A's soft power at the sporting, communication, and economic levels to convey a sense of authenticity, precision, and presentability.
The “competitiveness” issue for Serie A
The video continues by stating that Italy's top league is the most competitive in the world. The chairman promotes a multimedia product, the TV series 'Made in Italy,' conceived and produced in collaboration with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Italian Trade Commission, " to showcase the beauty of Italian football, the charm of our cities, and the efficiency of our production chains." To avoid self-referentiality, the chairman explains how this product won an award at the World Sports Film Festival. The video then moves on to perhaps the most specific but also least appealing part of the evening: the complex explanation of the organizational criteria for the next Serie A season.
This moment appears to be the one in which the actors have a mocking streak towards the technical-organizational manager of the championship, with phrases like " I wonder how much you fought to organize this calendar" , replacing seriousness with lightheartedness.
That same evening, June 6, 2025, the Norway-Italy World Cup qualifying match was scheduled. The chairman therefore invited everyone present to stay after the event to watch the match, in a specially designated room in the theater. Ironically, after having praised the Italian league and said that there are hardly any teams more competitive than ours, the match ended 3-0 to the Norwegians.
The performance tells us something…
In hindsight, this piece of research can tell us at least three things: 1) the performance attempted in vain to provide a proud and credible representation of the Italian football scene. Indeed, we can imagine a sense of tragedy among those who stopped to watch the Italian national team play after the event. 2) The performance logically demonstrated how the national football team and the football league share common sporting ambitions. Therefore, we witness a gap that is detrimental to the ritual's credibility. Indeed, why is it that if Italy has the most competitive football league in the world, its national team has been absent from the spotlight of global football for too long? 3) Serie A's competitiveness is driven by the participation of foreign players.
Returning to the video, the title sponsor Enilive is promoted , as is the focus on social commitment and corporate social responsibility within Serie A. Regarding the theater event, one of the former players marvels at this type of performance and the changes in communication that have been made over the years. The evening concludes with the award ceremony for three actors in a rather comfortable and somewhat out-of-place setting, so much so that one award recipient states that this award will be placed next to the Tapiro d'Oro. The last thing before the end of the recording is also the most important: Serie A will start on August 23rd. This is a brilliant idea, as it places the reason for the meeting at the end of the speech, as if it were a postscript . However, a postscript is usually used to add something relevant but not essential to the main body of the text.
Internationalization and comparison for Serie A
To conclude my analysis of the recording of the Serie A fixture presentation, an important but not fully explained part of the discussion is the internationalization of Italian football. The chairman repeatedly points out that the event is broadcast by numerous foreign broadcasters , but he doesn't mention what this approach might ultimately lead to.
While the Italian Super Cup, starting in 1993, has played many finals abroad, Serie A had intended to play some matches outside its national borders during the current season, only to later cancel this plan. This should have been stated in the fixture presentation, but instead it was revealed in the sports press. I believe the organizers deliberately left out this essential element that evening, waiting for other sources to disclose the plan.
Indeed, it would have been risky to expose oneself in this way, as this information would have divided the public between supporters and opponents. I would point out that analyzing the publication of the Serie B fixtures from a comparative perspective can broaden our perspective on the type of performances Italian football is experiencing.
Luca Canovi
References
- Jeffrey C., Alexander. Cultural pragmatics: social performance between ritual and strategy. Sociological Theory, vol. 22, no. 4, (Dec., 2004), pp.527-573
