Soccer throughout the year

Jul 22
07:22

2010

Michele De Capitani

Michele De Capitani

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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.

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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.

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