"Think for yourself, choose for yourself": the essence of football embodied by Dimarco and Fàbregas

What it means when a name is called that night

In early September, Italian football welcomed the most glamorous night of the year.

The Gran Galà del Calcio.

At this occasion, where players and coaches who shone throughout the season are honoured, Inter's Federico Dimarco was named Most Valuable Player (MVP).

And Cesc Fàbregas, who leads Como, took home the award for Best Coach.

The moment those two names were called, everyone gathered in the hall must have overlaid their own memories onto the scene.

That play in that match, the intent behind that tactical decision, the expression on a face in that instant.

But awards never simply point to results alone.

They are, at best, a temporary snapshot of one long story.

What it means for a left-back to "choose"

What Dimarco's play revealed

Federico Dimarco was never what you'd call an "obvious star."

He doesn't rack up goals the way an attacking forward might, nor does he generate headlines through dramatic transfer sagas.

The left-back position is a role that supports a team's structure, and its contributions rarely show up in the scoring column.

Even so, what Dimarco displayed throughout the season was an accumulation of split-second judgments.

Push forward, or hold back.

Make the overlapping run, or maintain position.

Send in the cross, or wait one more beat.

Each of these individual "choices" reshaped his team's form and threw off the calculations of the opposing defence.

Perhaps the MVP recognition was ultimately directed not at whether each choice turned out to be "correct," but at how much thought went into continuing to choose.

Barcelona's offer, and the club's judgment

Around this same night, news was also circulating about moves concerning Dimarco.

Barcelona reportedly showed interest in signing him and floated the idea of a swap deal involving Balde.

Inter turned it down.

This episode might simply be recorded as a failed transfer negotiation.

But seen from another angle, it also reveals how the club defines the value this player holds right now.

Not a monetary calculation, but where he fits within the team's blueprint.

That judgment was made quietly, on an entirely different plane from the glamour of the awards ceremony.

When a former player stands as a coach

Fàbregas, "a man of questions"

That Cesc Fàbregas received the Best Coach award may not have surprised many people.

And yet, when you stop to think about it, this is actually quite an unusual story.

Raised in Barcelona's youth academy, then moving through Arsenal, Chelsea, and Monaco, he chose Como after retiring as a player.

Como.

Situated on the shores of a lake in northern Italy, this club had only just returned to Serie A after a long period in the wilderness.

Why Como, exactly, is a question that still hasn't been fully answered.

But when you recall the kind of player Fàbregas was, you can perhaps imagine a little.

As a player, he was said to already have his next option in mind before he even received the ball.

Not "reading" the situation, but "thinking" before the situation even arrives.

That footballing philosophy is now being tested from the position of a coach.

The "coach with the right answer" versus the "coach who thinks"

When it comes to the role of a manager, we tend to look for someone who "knows the correct answer."

Which tactics will work, who should play, when to make a substitution.

But watching modern football, it often seems that long-term results are shaped less by the "quality of decisions" and more by "how a manager interprets the situation and what he entrusts to his players."

In that sense, the year Fàbregas has shown at Como is also a record of an experiment.

With a limited budget, limited name recognition, and limited time, what kind of culture can be instilled in a team.

It's tempting to think that the award committee's votes went to him not just for results, but for that process itself.

The distance between Japan's footballing environment and this night

When you try to bring an awards ceremony like the Gran Galà del Calcio closer to Japanese football, a certain frustration arises.

In Japan, the "way of thinking" or "decision-making process" of players and coaches still doesn't come to the surface all that often.

Coverage gathers around results, evaluation gets reduced to numbers, and the hesitation or inner conflict within a player is, in most cases, quietly covered over.

And yet, the instant of "which one do I choose" that Dimarco repeated dozens of times in a single match takes essentially the same shape whether it's a left-back in the J.League or a high schooler in a practice match.

What Fàbregas, as a coach, is trying to hand down to his players is likewise something more universal, unrelated to age or nationality.

It is the very structure football originally possessed: to think for yourself, choose for yourself, and accept the outcome yourself.

When you sense that something this modest and this deep is flowing beneath the dazzling footage of an awards ceremony, the news from that night begins to carry a slightly different weight.

And the two of them return to the pitch once more

The night of the Gran Galà del Calcio comes to an end.

Dimarco resumes training for the next match, will once again run up and down the left lane, and will once again face dozens of instants of "which one do I choose."

Fàbregas returns to Como's training ground, faces his players once more, and begins designing the next match.

The award may end up on display somewhere, or it may end up tucked away.

Either way, nothing changes out on the pitch.

There's a next opponent, a next phase of play, and another new choice waiting to arrive.

And within that repetition, the two of them stand once again.

NEWDIH ／ Perspectives & Methods