Luca Prota, 36, is logistic manager of Sassari Torres Feminine. Sardinian heart and charisma, until 6 years ago his knowledge of women's soccer was limited to knowing that there was a team in the big leagues in his city. In the chat we had with him, he tells us that at that time the foundations were being laid for the re-foundation and the President of the company, Andrea Budroni was looking for someone who could best tell the girls' exploits.
From there began his adventure with this historic club, a love that began by accident and is now as much a part of his life as his profession.
In the following interview, Luca Prota, who is also a lecturer on the Sport Business Academy team for the course in Women's Soccer Marketing and Regulations, takes us on this fascinating journey to discover an emblazoned club and a team that continues to make people dream.
7 Scudetti, 8 Coppe Italia and 7 Supercoppe di Lega: these are the achievements of one of the most emblazoned clubs in women's soccer and one that has made history in this area. How does it feel to be part of a team like this?
Those recounted are certainly an important slice of this club's historical successes. However, the word "success" is not always synonymous with victory, but we do not consider them as such, such as participation in the Women's Champions League to name the top European competition in which this team has played.
To be part of what, even today, albeit under new management, is still the most titled women's club in Italy is certainly a source of pride. Of equal magnitude the responsibility we all have to such a cumbersome past pushes us to give our best to rebuild our future.
You are logistic manager for the company: what does your profession consist of and what skills are needed?
Logistic Manager and Head of Academy Development specifically: kind of like being a father to a girl nearing graduation and one taking her first steps in kindergarten.
My role is a challenge: to identify the best solutions for the day-to-day problems that an ambitious organization, such as ours, encounters on a daily basis.
I challenge you: try, in this specific period of our history to move 25 people from Sardinia, whose ultimate goal is high-level sports performance, and do it by having only two domestic airports at your disposal, taking into account cost-effectiveness but at the same time the quality standards necessary to meet the needs of the technical staff and within the timetable dictated by a schedule written during last September, when the context was thought to be different.
Patience, the sometimes maniacal attention to detail, the ability to forge lasting and solid interpersonal relationships when volatility gets in the way, ambition. We would call it, to simplify, "problem solving" on a cv.
How does one become a logistic manager of a successful company like Sassari Torres? What was your educational background before you landed at this company?
It starts from the gavetta, the commitment, the will to achieve a goal together with many other people who make the same effort as you but only in another field.
I was born Communications Manager by virtue of a bachelor's degree in communications and journalism and a master's degree in "Communication and Digital Media"-to be honest, 6 years ago, it was simply needed to get back to talking about Torres Femminile after a couple of dark years. I am the one who revived the online presence of the Torres Femminile brand, and I say that with satisfaction, because we were already producing cutting-edge content back then. When work built, success after success, a real passion #conLaTorresNelCuore (our first campaign) I decided to invest further in training with a master's degree in "Sport Marketing & Communication," and my evolution in the club has been recognized year by year with a constant upgrade that today leads me to relate to those who will put my strategies into practice, to convey what women's soccer is all about, to try to build in house the champions of tomorrow as well.
Women's soccer in Italy and in the world: what is the current situation compared to men's soccer and what is still missing in order to rightfully enter the national sports culture?
Before the media boom related to the last World Cup we could say, without being able to be contradicted, that we were light years behind. The current situation sees a gap that is thinning and also very quickly. Italian women's soccer will soon be as solid as that of other nations historically closer to the sport.
The issue of "male" vs. "female" is anachronistic: today, women's soccer is already in the Italian sports culture with growing numbers, with the road to professionalism paved and with the presence of more and more female soccer players in televised and non-televised sports lounges. It is different if we talk about salary equity with the male, utopian.
What is not utopian is to arrive, soon, at salary dignity at all levels of women's soccer - both athletes and managerial bodies, possibly trained - and not only in the realities that occupy the upper-middle half of the Serie A standings. Our female athletes, even though they play in the C series, train exactly like professionals, face Sunday competitions as such and deserve to have this right recognized.
Many young people think it is enough to follow the leagues and play soccer on Sundays to work in a sports club. What is the importance of training today to be part of an emblazoned team like Sassari Torres women's team?
Just as many entrepreneurs unfortunately, even today, think that social media communication can be done by the grandson because he is always on his cell phone.
Outside of jokes, I believe it's just a matter of making choices for the good of one's company: a "small" entity like ours, at the end of the year pulls a sum that has been giving a 6-digit number for three seasons now, and I won't reveal the first of these. This is the result of a selection of professionalism in every single department of the team: the coach, Salvatore Arca, is the one who has most brought prestige to the red and blue colors in the past, we have athletes from all over Europe who play or have played in their national teams or who have made history in their home club, today I'm thinking of Jelena Marenic (9 consecutive championships in Spartak Subotica before coming to Sardinia), Martina Borg (Malta), Ligita Tumane (Latvia), Viktoria Zamba (Cyprus), Gergana Ilyicheva (Bulgaria), all staples of their respective national teams even in the last elimination rounds of access to the next European championships. The current captain, Maria Grazia Ladu, is a home-grown gem who has played in all categories of the youth national teams up to U17 and we are sure she will do everything to win her space again. Our Academy is in the valuable hands of coaches Pier Paolo Casu and Francesco Pilo, both of whom have licenses, and always with the view that time will reward the best choices, we were banking on qualified coaches even when this was not mandatory. The medical/physiotherapy practices that follow the girls are absolute excellences in the area, Studio Fisioterapico Beta has for a long time accompanied Dinamo Sassari in their victories for example. As for the off-field world, I have briefly told you about my preparation; we entrust communication to a digital agency that has created a spin-off specifically for us (iSport, which was born from Tinxy, a company of Francesco Pintus - a young and ambitious local entrepreneur - with the collaboration of one of the most well-known youtubers in the field as well as a very prepared sports graphic designer Marco Migaleddu) with whom we study every strategic detail and will soon rise to the fore in sports & marketing communication. General Manager Alfredo Pala is a man of great cultural and soccer depth.
I also do not feel like condemning those young people who think it is enough to follow the leagues or play soccer to dream of working in a sports club, they certainly have a strong advantage which is that of passion. After 6 years of experience and as many in the field, however, I can also say that curiosity and education are the only vehicle to success.
So fine with passion, but never without continuous professional development that always allows you to stay that step ahead of everyone or at least try.
What is actually the difference between men's soccer and women's soccer--if any?
We would have to go through a complex discourse of rights and economics to find what to date is the only difference between men's and women's. At the level of organizations the tendency is to form more and more complete and competitive staffs, at the physical level work is being done to create sportsmen regardless of their gender, the technical gestures that can be seen on a men's soccer field can also be seen on a women's field and succeed, absurdly enough, in attracting more attention because at the end of the day no one expects them but they are there.
Legal protections for clubs and athletes are yet to be reviewed, nonprofessionalism sometimes creates a regulatory hole that allows, on both sides, unpleasant situations to arise.
SBA is in the business of training young professionals in sports management, and recently a partnership for internships and webinars was formed just with Sassari Torres. What are your thoughts on this?
This is a collaboration that I personally wanted to activate, obviously with the approval of President Andrea Budroni, who is always very attentive to everything that is innovation. I seize, at this moment, that opportunity that I did not have when I entered the world of women's soccer, and I do so with extreme enthusiasm: to allow my club to get in touch with a niche of fans who have chosen to invest in their own training, a niche that has understood, before others, the potential of the sports world, particularly women's, and who want to approach this path as a work challenge.
I, as they say, "did it myself," but today, that our brand has regained its strength, we can convey what our journey has been and we can allow those who come to see us for an internship to get into a machine that is already oiled, in which yes learn how to drive first, but also experience the thrill of speed, of adrenaline to get to the different seasonal goals. Webinars are the training of the future, especially when born between winning synergies such as this one where the best of their respective fields come together to give birth to surefire projects.
Sports and gender equality. How should this be promoted in soccer as well, in your opinion?
We all need to be ambassadors of what we live daily in our respective realities. We all have to tell about this sports world, which is often a victim of stereotypes or as I said, of the same system that allows something to creak. The presence of the girls on Sky is giving everyone the opportunity to appreciate women's soccer and make the bar fans and the classic "women don't know how to play football" reconsider. Carrying a value-rich message is a duty on the part of our club, and we also try to convey to all our girls, the communicative power they now possess in their hands.
We don't have to tell about beautiful soccer at all costs but certainly about real soccer, made up of intense challenges in which having in front of one's eyes, professional athletes, can only be good for the overall image of the movement. The real fortune is to be free to dare in every direction because it is new, unexplored territory and devoid, or almost for now, of anything that is contaminated by external factors. I don't think for now we will ever see a women's soccer game postponed because "fans" intervene with acts of violence during an event.
Is there a memory, a particularly significant episode, related to your experience with Sassari Torres that you would like to share with us?
There would be so many sports episodes but it would also be too easy like this. The real beauty is the all-around Sassari Torres Women's world: in the last three years we have faced so many challenges off the field, putting ourselves on the line on a more difficult terrain than the soccer field.
We strongly believe that in 2021, a women's soccer team is the strongest existing communication vehicle for social campaigns related to the territory understood as Sassari, but and especially Sardinia and Italy. We have met over 2,000 students addressing the issue of bullying and cyber bullying, raised funds for ALS research after having the honor of meeting Paolo Palumbo (at the time the youngest ALS sufferer in Europe) and talked about proper nutrition, with the #INFUORIGIOCO strand. We have always visited when possible young patients in pediatric clinics at Christmas and have been close to grandparents in our city especially when RSAs have had to withstand Covid-19 outbreaks. Every week we take the field with special jerseys bearing the hashtag #KICKVIOLENCEAWAY on the chest, and we already have one more project in the pipeline that is top secret at the moment but always related to something special.
Not a single episode but a set of activities with very strong human value are my "particularly significant moment."
What do the fans look like at a women's soccer game?
Families, some friends, a few onlookers. This is the normality of the 90% of realities, in that 10% we find Juventus, Milan, Fiorentina and a few others who have real fans in their "male" form so you can understand me better.
However, one thing is certain, they are fewer, they are few but excellent. We hardly get a comment out of place even in the face of a few less fortunate days, this in the men's does not happen.
What is this professional experience teaching you?
To have patience, to hang in there, to work for the group and feel part of a family.
The girls who wear the crosses and towers of our logo on their chests number more than 50, among staff and collaborators we count another 20 or so people, and we all know each other, we face difficulties together, we make dialogue the winning weapon.
I have learned that it is indeed true that you never stop learning, and the word "multitasking" is the most apt one to describe the people who revolve around Torres Women's or who want to get involved in an experience related to this particular sports world.
