More Italy Thoughts

I had a few other bits and pieces left over from Italy before I turn my attention back to other matters, including the Europe qualifiers, Champions League, and some goings-on in England.

• Italian skipper Fabio Cannavaro had one of the saddest and most poignant quotes relating to the whole mess in Italy when he said: 'I play at Real Madrid, a club that has a perfect stadium, full of children, without violence. From the outside I realize the awful images Italian football gives itself. We cannot go on like this.' And he’s right: you go to a match in Italy and there are no kids around, because of the potential danger. That is madness. What else do we even have sports for?

Read the full article at http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=481976&cc=5901

• Robert Gotta has a great article on the state of Italian football here, from ESPN.com

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=481617&root=europe&cc=5901

• CNNSI’s Jonah Freedman reported that Manchester United (Roma’s next opponent in the Champion’s League; who are visiting Rome) has offered a FULL REFUND to any of their fans who bought tickets to the game but are now too frightened to attend. Think about that: is there a sadder referendum on the state of Italian football? Manchester United fans being AFRAID to attend a football match?

• Finally, and most furiously, even the exchange rate in Italy is now killing football fans. I always wear football shirts, and look forward to picking up new ones in Italy. I loaded up on a ton of Fiorentina stuff and got a cool SSC Venice shirt, but I paid through the nose. If this keeps up much longer I will have to start wearing MLS stuff – Damn!

Mid-Week Reading

I’ve decided to continue my semi-break from the Fan-atic page for a few days longer. One reason is that these Euro qualifiers just don’t interest me at all; I CAN”T WAIT to get back to league football this weekend. Also, frankly, I am little busy in my “real life” job (I am a writer and editor in that life as well, but in that life I get paid to do stuff, so that comes first) so I’ve put football writing on the back-burner until I watch some meaningful games this weekend.

I did, however, want to draw your attention to two very fine articles on ESPN.com. The first is Roberto Gotta’s analysis of the Italian National Team head coaching job, and more specifically, an examination of the culture of Italian football and how difficult it is to make a success of oneself there. If you are like me (Series A is probably my favorite league at this point) this is a solid read.

The second article is a piece by the much-linked-to Phil Ball, who writes about his son’s U-12 league and uses this to explain the Spanish National Team. I stand by my often-made claim that Ball is one of the best writers in the business.

One final point: one of my good friends have suggested that I link to ESPN too much, and probably at the expense of other really good stuff out there. Perhaps he is right; it is true that I don’t often link to sites that I actually like very much, including sites based in England and Italy. I don’t link to ESPN as much as I do because I have the typical American worship of all things ESPN (in fact, I hardly watch the channel excepting Champions League matches) but because they are able to recruit and keep an extraordinary group of international writers. Their coverage of Spain and Italy, most obviously, is quite good, especially as we are an English speaking readership. Their English League coverage is weaker (I tend to go to the English newspapers for that) and, strangely enough, I thing CNNSI.com’s coverage of U.S. soccer knocks ESPN’s out of the park.

Anyway, I link to ESPN’s stuff often because I think it is good. You be the judge:

Phil Ball:

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=472599&root=euro2008&cc=5901&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos3

Roberto Gotta:

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=472655&root=euro2008&cc=5901&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos2

Porno Fiorentina?

In my excitement about the upcoming Brazil-Mexico match being played down the street from my house, I almost let an important footballing story slip through the, um, cracks.

Readers know that Fiorentina is one of my favorite clubs in the world. (Fiorentina is the club of the beautiful city of Florence in Italy.) They are off to a particularly bright start this year and have an exciting team of young stars. Now comes news that they will be broadcasting at least one of their games (an Italian Cup match) on a hard-core Italian porn channel.

Now, between the violence and the deaths and the corruption that is infecting the Italian game, one knew that the sport would have to go in dramatic new directions to revive interest. I thought this would mean taking steps to reduce the corruption in the league, hiring honest refs, etc. But no. Instead they are just going to show footie on a porn channel. That should work.

For more on this bizarre story, see here:

http://shakedownsports.com/2007/09/11/another-reason-to-pay-for-porn-channels/

Internationals and Qualifiers

Below please find notes from my friend Matt on this past weekend’s internationals. As usual, I agree with almost everything he says, and the things I don’t agree with (his summary of the USA/Brazil game) stems from the fact that I haven’t seen the match yet. I’ll catch it on my DVR in a day or two.

Other than the flood of internationals, the only other big football news from this weekend was that everyone’s favorite chubby center-forward, Ronaldo, will be hurt for at least another month. Apparently he has a bum knee. Whether the bad knee resulted from having to lug around an extra 25 pounds of Ronaldo is largely beside the point; sadly, we won’t see the big fella in the black and red for some time yet.

Finally, note that my friend says he can’t wait to see Brazil live. That’s because, as I said, we have tickets to the Brazil-Mexico match in Foxboro, Massachusetts, on Wednesday night. We are both looking forward to it, and I will report back here to the fanatic after the game.

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Just a quick note on this weekend’s internationals. Not that I could watch them, but apparently England looked impressive for once. At least for the first time under McClaren. I guess his job is safe until Wednesday. I’m glad to see that Owen scored. Hopefully this will be a sign of things to come for Newcastle.

The Italy v. France game was a bore, but good for Scotland, who are in second place in the group. They have a big game with France on weekend, and if they can pull out a win or even a draw, they will be sitting pretty. Unfortunately, Northern Ireland wasted a chance to put some distance between themselves and Spain after they lost to Latvia, and Spain failed to beat Iceland. Speaking of Spain, they are even a bigger disappointment than England. I think it could easily be argued that they have better players than the England squad, yet they always have a hard time qualifying for tournaments, and when they do qualify, if they get out of the group stage, they promptly get dispatched in the quarterfinals. I know they used the same old excuse about players from different regions of the country not getting along, but that is bullshit. If Iraq can win the Asian Cup with a team of Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis, then there isn’t any reason why a team of Basques, Catalans, and Catalonians can’t do better as well.

Then there was the USA/Brazil game, which can be looked at from two points of view if you support the USA. The pros include the fact that Dempsey had another great game, the Americans hung tough, they played tough by challenging the Brazilians, especially in midfield, the first goal against them was a joke, and they weren’t getting any of the calls (they should have had at least one penalty call go their way). On the con side, they still lost by 2 goals to a Brazil team that was on top gear, they were playing at home, and Bocanegra’s goal was a joke. It just happened to hit him and go in. All in all, I guess the US could be somewhat pleased with the result, but they are a long way from being in the elite of soccer nations. In any event, watching the game wet my appetite for Wednesday’s game. I can’t wait to see Brazil live!!!

More on Italy

Below find links to good articles on the increasingly depressing news out of Italy. My guess right now is that they probably will play this weekend (it looks like the latest would be next weekend) as they make some superficial changes to stadium security. As most of these articles and columns point out, there probably won’t be real change until the fans change to a degree where a football match is simply not an excuse for a huge fight anymore. Word is that we will get some sort of announcement by Wednesday at the latest…

Football Italia:

http://www.channel4.com/sport/football_italia/feb5o.html

BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/6327655.stm

CNNSI:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/soccer/02/05/bc.eu.spt.soc.italy.hooligan.ap/index.html

ESPN

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=406846&root=europe&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos1&cc=5901

and…

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=406869&root=england&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab1pos2&cc=5901

Series A Tragedy

Imagine waking up one morning in your home outside of Boston, or Chicago, or Los Angeles. Imagine turning on the morning news and discovering that the NFL or Major League Baseball had cancelled all league games for the foreseeable future. Imagine the government ordered the league to shut its doors because fans of one of the teams in that league committed acts that led to the death of a police officer and scores of injured. Imagine your friend’s reactions as they discovered there would be no NFL games this weekend; or no baseball games for the next week. It would be one of the most important and talked-about events in the history of American sports.

Well, such a scenario just happened this weekend in Italy; the Prime Minister and his government ordered a halt to all professional football games until someone, somewhere, can come up with some sort of solution to fan violence. The murder of the police officer has served as the final straw that may lead to real changes in Italian football. Or, maybe not.

On Friday evening in Sicily a game was played between Palermo and Catania. During the second half rioting started, and so tear gas was shot into the stands and play was halted. Regardless, the violence went on and continued after the game. The police officer, Filippo Raciti, (the father of two small children) was killed either by a firecracker thrown at him or by a blunt blow to the head. Authorities are sure only of the fact that the death was deliberate and planned. A further seventy fans were hospitalized for various injuries. As a result CONI, (the Italian Olympic Committee, the highest authority in Italian sport) acting on the advice of the Italian government, has essentially shut down Italian football, and they have vowed to halt all games until they have figured out some way to stop the violence endemic to Italian soccer.

As I’ve written before, lots of people have strong feelings about Italian football, but lots of those feelings are not based on solid facts. The most common critique of Italian soccer is that it is boring; this critique is usually made by someone who has never seen the Italian game. This year, as in years past, Series A continues to be one of the highest scoring leagues in the world, with fluid passing and appealing, attacking football. Teams like Inter and Fiorentina are fun to watch because they play such positive football.

The real problems of Italian football are the absolute corruption of the administration of the league (which I have written about before) and the violence associated with the fans. It is unclear whether Series A will ever clean up its corruption problems; this summer’s slap-on-the-wrist solution to the moggiopoly scandal suggests it will not. We shall now see what they do about fan violence.

Violence in Italy is yet another misunderstood part of the game. Italy is not, for sure, the worst league in Europe for fan violence and racism (the French league probably wins that dubious award this year for the ultras of PSG alone); any level of violence and racism, however, is unacceptable. The English leagues, and especially the Premier League, has done an admirable job of cleaning up what was once the seedy and dangerous world of English football. Now that games are safe, it is no surprise that the premier league is among the most profitable football leagues in the world.

When I attended the Fiorentina- Atalanta match this November in Florence, I did not feel unsafe. I sat, with my wife, among nice people in an obviously family-friendly section. During both our walk to and from the game we felt and saw a visible police presence. However, I kept one eye warily on the ultras who occupy each end of the stadium in Florence. There the fans chanted and threw lit flares at one another, and especially at the penned-in visiting fans. Only two weeks after I returned to the States from Italy, in a game again at Florence’s football stadium, the fans lit a car on fire and tussled with police. I was never in danger at the game I attended, but conditions were obviously present where a dangerous situation could have materialized. Apparently in Italy danger is never that far away.

So how will Italy address this problem? On Sunday CONI met and came up with some preliminary suggestions, including more police at games, installing cameras in stadiums, and holding clubs more responsible for fan violence. We will see how many, if any, of these measures are actually enacted. In Italian football, as we have seen, problems tend to get swept under the rug once the camera lights go away. Critics are wrong to criticize what happens on the Italian football pitch, where the game is played as beautifully as anywhere in the world; but Italian football keeps giving fans reasons to turn away, for reasons that are very real. If Italy doesn’t clean this up soon, turning away is all the fans will have left to do.

Series A.....ggravating

I’m a big fan of Italian Series A football. I really am. I love the passion of the fans and the knowledge and dedication of everyone you meet in Italy for their favorite clubs. I am personally a huge fan of Fiorentina and I also like Siena very much. Luca Toni, the great Fiorentina striker, is one of my favorite players in the world, and I also always go out of my way to watch Yoann Gourcuff, who is quickly becoming one of favorites.

I also don’t have much patience for the standard complaints about Series A. The people who call it “boring” or “defensive” or “too low scoring” typically are revealing nothing more than the fact that they don’t watch Italian football and don’t know what they are talking about. This season Series A continues to be one of the highest-scoring leagues in the world, and the passing and attacking football couldn’t be any more attractive.

However, Italian football has to get its act together, or soon it will lose even its most dedicated followers. This week the President of Inter and the Vice-president of Milan were called into questioning for cooking the books; remarkably, this comes on the heels of the most damaging football corruption case in the history of the sport, which happened just this summer. It’s as if no one learned anything.

Here in the United States, our sports scandals typically involve steroids or something. There is no doubt that steroids are bad news, but in Italy, over the past year, we’ve seen clear and convincing evidence that certain favored teams were essentially bribing refs to have games decided in their favor. This, of course, shakes the sport to the very core and rightfully leads fans to ask why they should pay for a product if the game is going to be decided in advance. In the US, if such a sports scandal happened, it would surely be the biggest and most talked-about sports problem in the history of the country. In Italy, it seems as if it was nothing more than business as usual.

The punishments handed out in this summer’s scandal were scandals in themselves; it’s the one area where I have trouble defending Italian football. The fact that everyone got off so lightly almost ensures that people will do it again. If the Italian authorities have any sense at all, they will throw the book at Inter and Milan if they are guilty of cooking the books. Otherwise, people like me might just start agreeing with our friends that there is just something wrong with Italian football.





One other quick note today: Real was bounced, a little while ago, from the Kings Cup. Good job, everyone. Perhaps if the team president wasn’t publicly embarrassing the players, followed by the president immediately apologizing to the players, following the team coach giving rude and obscene gestures to the home fans, the team would be a little more stable. At least as a Real fan I can take with me that Robinho and Gago played well. Still, the team was terrible today in dead-ball situations. It’s too bad the team doesn’t have anyone who is good at the dead ball. You know, someone who is world-renowned for scoring from free kicks. Like maybe even someone who was sitting in the stands watching the game? Ah, well.