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The passion that Italians have for soccer never stops. Transfer market, summer test matches and training camps before the beginning of the Italian league: Italy makes a soccer immersion even in summer. Italians, people of saints, poets, navigators and…soccer supporters! Soccer is certainly Italians’ favourite sport, and Italians do not only play it (many children go to the soccer schools that can be found even in the smallest villages), they also speak a lot about it. Sunday soccer matches and midweek Europa or Champions League matches dominate the conversations in any office, bar or square, resolving even social differences. Monday morning, in front of a coffee and a croissant, a manager is likely to start a discussion about soccer with any type of customer, no matter his/her job or level of education: soccer is a common subject, which everybody, from housewives to kids, claims to be expert of, and everybody is always ready to tell his/her opinion about the match that has been played the night before, the choices of the coach, the referee’s mistakes. Italians’ passion for soccer does not reduce even in summer, when the league is over, players are on their yacht or on a golden beach with a pretty girl waiting for the training camp to start, and the TV only broadcasts more or less verified transfer market news. Italians do not detoxify from soccer even on holiday, and even when matches –at least the important ones- are over, they always find something to hold onto: a test match, an indiscretion about the club, any kind of news which can prevent them from disconnecting from their favourite sport. Also the front page of sport newspapers, in summer, do not stop dealing with soccer, succeeding in filling columns over columns about soccer, sometimes to the detriment of some other less popular sport. This incapacity of disconnecting from soccer is even stranger if you consider that with league matches, minor leagues, Europa and Champions League, soccer is played, and above all discussed, throughout the week, and if you also consider that the period of inactivity is not very long: with the play-off and the play-out matches of the minor leagues, and the European leagues preliminaries, people do not even have the time to have withdrawal symptoms! And what about the national football team? Every two years, when the European, and above all the World Cup take place, giving people the possibility to watch “real” matches until mid-July, the collective soccer addiction is even more widespread. Someone has already highlighted that Italians unusually become very patriotic during the European and World Cups, and hand on their heart and hugging each other feeling like brothers, they sing out the national anthem all together, as if they really were “ready to die” because “Italy has called” (as written in the anthem). The summers Italians are more tied to are those when the World Cup takes place, those summers which allow them to make a soccer immersion, with commentaries, interviews and replies just as happens in winter, those summers when, if things go well, you can go along the streets and celebrate, and there are no fights between opposing sides. After all, soccer is a game and a big chance to celebrate - besides being a passion that is part of Italians’ collective memory - a game that Italians would never stop playing. This article was written by Francesca Tessarollo with support from news basket. For more information, please visit video olimpiadi or video Tour de France.
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