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Created on Friday, 29 June 2012 14:29

by Francesco Migliore -

Is there anything more predictable than Italian football? This is not a trick question, nor am I being facetious and whilst it may, to people who follow football a lot more than I do, seem that I am writing the proverbial bull, this is not the case and I hope to prove my point below.

Let me start from the most obvious of points: last night Italy ousted a much more fancied German team out of the European Championships with a 2-1 win in the semi-final. Predictably obvious because the Germans have never beaten the Azzurri in a competitive game at a major tournament, never, not once in what is now 8 attempts (I think). Now this is not some half-baked footballing nation, on the contrary, three World Cups and three European trophies make the Germans the strongest of the European nations in terms of results at major events. Why they cannot defeat the Italians is an answer I cannot give, I do not believe anyone can, what is very obvious is that despite this being a new generation of players, this is a record which weighs very heavily on German shoulders; and it inspires Italian players.

Watching the game one could sense Germany’s desperation to get a good start, put their noses in front and stay there, knowing than not doing so would lead to crippling self-doubt. Try as they might, the opening would not come and 36 minutes later found themselves 2-0 down thanks to Balotelli’s double strike. This is an example of Italian belief against their favourite opponents; in the quarter-final against England, Italy had 34 attempts on goal without managing to convert one, against Germany, 4 attempts, 2 goals, it is almost as if they do not believe they could lose.

And the Germans, well, the very opposite is true, the swagger was gone, the fragile belief that history means  nothing, evaporated, passes went amiss, opportunities created, fluffed, the supposedly meaningless historical pressure choked the life out of another generation of outstanding German players.

The next predictable aspect of Italian football has nothing to do with their opponents and everything to do with the history of the country and what makes the people who live there tick, in a sense this is a history lesson more than a footballing story, but I firmly believe the two are interconnected beyond doubt, maybe I am just deluded? You be the judge.

Italy has won four World Cups and one Euro, for the purpose of my argument I will disregard the first two World Cups and their solitary Euro victory, not because it suits me, but rather because those events in no way represented the global footballing community as they do in the present day. At best they could be described as mini tournaments and at worst as completely farcical and not deserving the title which they conveyed to the victors.

That done, Italy won the World Cup in 1982 and again in 2006, both won with a team written off as no hopers entering the respective tournaments with the national league in complete disarray thanks to investigations into match fixing and other sordid doings. Which is exactly what is going on at this very moment in Italian football, I am not completely up to date with the particulars, but it would seem that all is not kosher in Serie A, unsurprisingly; to me at least, this has united the national team like no motivational speaker ever could. This is an inherent characteristic of the Italian people, the moment they feel the world is against them, that they are being targeted or simply when the institution that is represented by a government begins to delve too deeply in their personal lives, they react with a united and committed front which is hardly visible when things are going smoothly.

There is an old joke that asks how many gears do Italian tanks have? The punch line being one forward and five reverse gears referring to their capitulation in the Second World War. A fair reflection at face value but completely missing what makes Italy what it is. Not being a nation which embraces King and country (Italy kicked their monarch out), in truth not really a united nation at all. It is easy to forget that it was formed in the late 19th century by combining what had been small independent fiefdoms controlled by nobility. These parcels of land had fought many a war between them and never truly buried the hatchet. In Italy one is not Italian, he is Sicilian, Roman, Tuscan, and so on and even these appropriations are a bit vast for the people who live there, at times the village one derives from is even more important that the region, let alone the country. So appealing to their sense of nationhood is rather futile, to fight a war against people they had never met for a nation they did not truly believe in; it was never going to happen.

Surrender they did and so the jokes were born.

Instead to understand the psyche of the Italian, one needs to look at the actions of the people of the land after the surrender in the Great War. Many a book has been written of Allied soldiers who escaped the German camps, books which detail how the local populace took them in, fed them, hid them and aided them as best they could to return to safety. All of this done at enormous risk to themselves and to their families, acts of extraordinary bravery from very ordinary people, not the actions of cowards, but rather the actions of true heroes who would sacrifice all they had in what they believed to be the correct way forward. Also as a big fuck off to the occupying Germans. In essence the spirit of Italy and its people is only visible when they are cornered, with nowhere to go they fight back harder than anyone can imagine. Italians do not subscribe to the ideology of nationhood, or to a representative government, this are things they merely tolerate as long as they can get on with their lives unimpeded; interfere with that basic right and look out for the backlash.

How does this relate to the football, rather clearly by looking at the turmoil in the league, the questions  being asked of their integrity, the players have united in a manner which has turned a limited bunch of individuals into a team which far exceeds the sum of its parts and this was to be expected.

Will this cohesion carry them one more step and victory over Spain on Sunday? It is very possible, I am just not certain I want them to win. Why? For history shows that the moment the Azzurri are holders of any trophy, the cohesion is gone, performances become diabolical as they were in South Africa in 2009 and 2010 at the Confed and World Cups respectively, the unity reverts back to typical Italian behaviour of what is best for me and an attitude that everything is beneath them and so not worth the effort. Italy win on Sunday and they will be nothing short of disgraceful at the World Cup in Brazil in two years time.

They are after all very predictable are they not?