Kudos to Gattuso and Napoli for winning the Coppa Italia. From the extended highlights that I just watched they clearly were deserved winners. From a neutral perspective one has to ask if there was any merit in the FIGC reducing the final stages of the Coppa to a glorified curtain raiser for the restart of Serie A. Domestic cups as it is struggle for relevance in comparison to leagues. It is usually the semifinal stage onwards that they creep back into the wider conscious. The pandemic enabled England to give the FA Cup a new sense of tournament excitement after the conclusion of the league. In Spain, they may even play the Copa final next year, because they believe the occasion of an all Basque final deserves the right circumstances. So why did it Italy feel the need to rush their cup? To this observer, it only served to increase the irrelevance of the competition and deprive us of the tension and sense of occasion a final of this magnitude deserves.