English Summary
Editor’s Letter
By Igor Garanin
I don’t care about football. To be more precise, I don’t like it at all. For quite a long time my father enthusiastically caught balls in the goalposts of an amateur team. He always dragged me to practice. While I waited for my father to finish, I had to stand right behind the netting of the goal. That way it was, on the one hand, easier for the adults to keep an eye on me, and on the other, a ball wouldn’t smack into my still delicate skull. People assumed that a child would develop a passion for this game, so beloved by his father from childhood, but the loud crowd of sweaty men shouting at each other around a small ball evoked nothing but profound boredom in me. For some reason nobody else brought children to practice, and so there was absolutely nobody to play or talk with. It was terribly lonely and boring to sit behind the net and, in the best case scenario, roll a very simple Soviet-made toy car along the goalpost. In my adult life, any reminder of football or invitations to go to a match or kick a ball around provoked nothing but rejection from me. At least that was the case until one day duty called — or rather, I was invited by Stefano Gabbana and Domenico Dolce to a game. It was impossible to say no: they had been partners for many years, they were comrades and friends, they wouldn’t understand if I didn’t go, they would curse me or be dreadfully offended. I had to go. It was winter in Milan, and there was terrible traffic in the area of the famous San Siro. As the car advanced, the hulking form of the stadium emerged from the thick fog, looking like Mordor. It gave off a scary atmosphere. I was led down endless corridors to get to a box for special guests. Finally I ended up in a space flooded with light, where team managers, sponsors, players’ agents and all other insiders of the football world were bustling about. And suddenly I was taken through small doors to a box that belonged to Dolce & Gabbana, as a major sponsor of FC Milan. It was a shock. The box was located on the very lowest