Gramsci wrote:

sunlore wrote:Football. A game the Italians are unsuccessesfully attempting to murder for decades now.

Simmo is right.

No he isn't and either are you. So what about the external politics of Italian football. Last night's games was great, there was none of the usual Italian trick of scoring and holding onto the ball for the next 60 minutes.

simmo wrote:I fucking hate the Italian football team. Not by dint of some jingoistic frenzy, but for some fairly good reasons documented here.

a couple of choice quotes:

In February last year Torino's Senegalese defender Djibril Diawara had his nose smashed while playing Bari. With blood pouring from his face, Diawara confronted Luigi Garzya, Bari's captain. This was too much for Bari's coach, Eugenio Fascetti, who shouted: 'The nigger Diawara spat in Garzya's face! And the spit might even be infected! Why don't they just stay home, these niggers?'

Sometimes there is even a quasi-official tone to Italy's racism. During a 1997 trip to Poland, the Italian national squad refused to accompany federation officials on a visit to Auschwitz. A journalist who wrote the story was threatened. Meanwhile Gianluigi Buffon, the Italian national goalkeeper, has worn a T-shirt sporting the fascist slogan, 'Death to those who surrender'. Buffon, who plays for Parma in Serie A, also raised a few eyebrows last year when he picked 88 as his shirt number for the new season. The decision upset Italy's Jewish community, which pointed out that the figure is sometimes used as a neo-Nazi symbol - 'H' is the eighth letter of the alphabet, so 88 equates to HH, or Heil Hitler. Buffon denied any knowledge of the link, claiming: 'I have chosen 88 because it reminds me of four balls and in Italy we all know what it means to have balls: strength and determination.' He later changed his number to 77. When Dutch defender Aron Winter signed for Lazio in 1992, graffiti appeared welcoming the 'nigger Jew' to the club. The pea-brained authors clearly had not noticed that the player's middle name is Mohammed.

Luther Blissett wrote:Sadly there is a lot of racism in Italian club football allright, but that is not usually the case amongst supporters of the Italian national team. Conversely, England's travelling support always contains a block of racist bigots. On the Guardian World Cup podcast there was a report of England fans outside an Irish pub in the Frankfurt city centre chanting "No surrender to the IRA", "Two world wars and one world cup" and performing Nazi salutes. I'm sorry for decent England fans but I always hope the England team crash and burn on the pitch and that the racist shitbag fans have to go home early.

Wood Goblin wrote: By and large, racism has vanished from the English game, and while the behavior you mention is repellent, it's clearly directed toward Germany's risible past and not toward Jews.

Luther Blissett wrote:

Wood Goblin wrote: By and large, racism has vanished from the English game, and while the behavior you mention is repellent, it's clearly directed toward Germany's risible past and not toward Jews.

Yes and no, rascist English fans who sing "no surrender" are referring to Ireland not Germany. Also, it is a song associated with the English far right. But as you pointed out thankfully rascism in the English game at the top level has all but been eliminated. Most of the idiot rascist fans support lower league teams. In Italy rascism amongst club fans is still a huge problem. However, as I stated earlier, fans of the Italian national team have by and large a good reputation abroad unlike sadly the small group of rascist English fans who seem to travel to every tournament for which England qualifies and wreck the party for real english fans.

Wood Goblin wrote: On a totally different note, the France-Switzerland match was the suckiest thing that has ever sucked.

emmanuelle cunt wrote:agreed. i thought france will be a lot stronger. oh, and how many yellow cards were shown during that game? 16?