Musings about Nationalism in Italian Football

 Member's of Italy's national football squad posing for Dolce & Gabbana

Since Italy recently qualified for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, I was reminded of a thought I had a number of years ago...

Back in the summer of 2003, I backpacked around Europe for nearly 2 months.  I made my way through London, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Paris, Dijon, slept on the beach in Biarritz, San Sebastien, Barcelona, and Nice before making my way to Italy in cities like Florence and Rome. The trip gave me a real sense of European Nationalism.  Why?  Because each place I visited employed different customs, phone systems, languages, and ultimately football strategies.  Just like hockey here, European football or soccer as Americans and Canadians refer to it, is a religion.  And while sports fans treasure their league teams, they live and die with their national squads - the teams which ultimately represent the countries in European and World Cup Championships.

The point of this story is (and there is one assuredly!) that while in Rome, I had conversation with an Italian man on the train. His English was pretty good and we ended up speaking about, what else, football!  My mother was born in Naples so naturally, I cheer for the Italians at every major competition; I would however, root for a Canadian squad if we ever had one good enough to qualify for these tournaments.  Anyway, I asked this Italian man why the Italians always play a conservative, almost military-like defensive style, when they had such skilled players. He replied simply by saying "this is the Italian style, and that's how WE play".  But, I said, "why not open it up and play a South-American style, with more flare, speed, and offense?"  I awoke his ire, I think, by suggesting the Italians play like the Brazilians.   He immediately started shaking his head, saying "no, no, no, you don't understand, we play this way, because this is the Italian way to play football.  We can only win this way."

I was mystified.  Why is the Italian football strategy so rigid and archaic?  I mean strong defense is great if you only have players inclined able to play that way, but if you have a squad filled with speed and skill, why not adapt the team's strategy to the strengths of its members?  In my opinion, the answer boils down to nationalism.  In Canada, we expect our teams to play a 'blood and guts' brand of hockey.  Still though, whatever the roster for the 2010 Canadian Men's Olympic hockey team ends up looking like, I'm sure most Canadians would take any kind of victory in Vancouver, regardless of how it was accomplished.  In Italy and in many European countries however,  the team's style of play is just as important as the victory itself.  And I think this ultimately has something to do with deep seeded nationalistic ideals embedded in many hermetic European nations.

Defender Telegraph, page 8, No. 001