The ANNOTICO Report
The author states:
"It is too easy to underestimate Italy. There is a tendency to
stereotype Italians" "There is in Britain a puerile and rather
sickening tendency to gloat at any evidence of Italian distress. He gives
examples.
However,he ends with the
comment "Our attitude toward Italians and their magnificent country
needs and deserves profound
reformation." Amen!!!
The
first five paragraphs discuss how the Italians should have been
distracted by the Soccer Scandals in Italy, (similar
to the Steroid Scandals in USA Baseball, and Steroids in the Tour d'France, the Unending String of Sexual Assaults by
Professional and Collegiate Athletes in the USA,
and the Ongoing Accepted Boxing
"Fixes" in the USA).
They pondered whether the Azzurri's success in
spite of the scandals were due to the cynicism of being used to scandals, or
their spirit, resilient self-belief, organized athleticism, and great
resolve.
FORGET FOOTBALL, OUR VIEW OF
ITALIANS IS CORRUPT
The Herald, Glasgow,
Scotland, UK
Harry Reid
July 06 2006
[The first five paragraphs
discuss how the Italians should have been distracted by the Soccer Scandals in Italy, (similar to the Steroid Scandals in
USA Baseball, and Steroids in the Tour d'France, the
Unending String of Sexual Assaults by Professional and Collegiate Athletes in
the USA, and the Ongoing Accepted Boxing "Fixes" in the USA).
They pondered whether the Azzurri's success in spite of the scandals were due to the
cynicism of being used to scandals, or their spirit, resilient self-belief,
organized athleticism, and great resolve.]
I
was pretty certain Germany
would beat Italy
in the World Cup semi-final. This was not because Germany were the better
footballers but because I thought that the ongoing corruption scandal in
Italian football, which directly affects 13 of the World Cup squad, was bound
to have a desperately unsettling effect on the team as they prepared for the
semi-final.
But,
no, the Italians played with a spirit, a resilient self-belief and an organized
athleticism that made a mockery of my prediction. And these are qualities that
we wrongly tend to associate more with Germany.
In the end, the Italians wanted victory even more than the Germans did, and
they triumphed excitingly and dramatically.
Cynics
may say that the Italian players were not affected by the scandal because
corruption is part of everyday Italian life. Match-fixing: so what's new? When Italy
won the World Cup in 1982 it was shortly after another huge match-fixing
scandal. Paolo Rossi, the leading scorer in that tournament, had only recently
returned from suspension because of his involvement in the imbroglio.
The current allegations involve four clubs: Juventus, the Italian champions; Milan, the club owned by the former Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi; Lazio; and Fiorentina. It would be wrong to underplay the gravity of
the scandal allegations. This week the Italian Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, took the remarkable step of writing an open letter
to Germany's
Chancellor, Angela Merkel, in which he insisted the Germany-Italy semi-final
could not be allowed to "cancel the evils of Italian football, to push
into the background the criminal aspects that have emerged". He added that
Italian football required "profound reformation".
Under investigation are 26 men, including eight club
directors, eight referees and two linesmen. Last week the Juventus
team manager, Gianluca Pessotto, attempted suicide.
The home of one of the Juventus players representing Italy in Germany has been searched. And yet
this background of adversity has produced, if anything, a spirit of greater
resource and resolution in the Italian squad.
It is too easy to underestimate Italy. There is a tendency to
stereotype Italians. Last week the German magazine Der
Spiegel presented a disgraceful pastiche of Italian footballers as slimy
mammas' boys and greasy parasites. In Britain, I find that too many
people assume that Italians are routinely idle and corrupt. This attitude
prevails despite the enormous industry and convivial life-enhancing zest of the
many Italian restaurateurs and shopkeepers in our midst. Indeed, in my
experience most Italians put the British to shame when it comes to clean
living, hard work and general decency. I am a regular visitor to Italy
and I find the country's cities to be beacons of pleasant and modest behaviour compared with the war zones that too many of our
cities are becoming after nightfall.
And
there is in Britain
a puerile and rather sickening tendency to gloat at any evidence of Italian
corruption. The last example I can think of concerned the case involving Brian
Mills, the husband of the Cabinet Minister Tessa Jowell
and a former lawyer and adviser to Silvio Berlusconi.
The view in Britain
seemed to be that anybody associated with Berlusconi was simply bound to be
corrupt. I would not wish to defend Berlusconi, but before we condemn this
rather louche figure, I reckon we should look at the
way some of our own elected leaders behave. And, despite all its problems, Italy
works.
Rejecting the far-sighted efforts of Winston Churchill,
Benito Mussolini chose to side with Hitler rather than remain neutral during
the Second World War. This catastrophic decision meant Italy ended up in the worst of all
scenarios, with two massive invading armies slogging it out across the length
and breadth of the country over two bloody years, while a civil war was under
way simultaneously.
After the war, Italy was desperately poor,
unstable and broken. It had to pay vast reparations to the Soviets, the
Albanians, the Greeks, the Yugoslavs and others. Yet, despite the admittedly
endemic corruption within the dominating Christian Democratic Party, the
country recovered and its economic growth acquired almost miraculous
proportions. (The fruits were not evenly divided; but is
the north-south split in Italy
any worse than similar disparities in other European countries?) Despite the
disdain with which too many Britons view the Italian state, its administrators and its magistrates have frequently performed heroically.
I am not so naove as to think
everything is perfect in Italy.
While I am beguiled by the way Italians live, I am aware there is a saturnine
side to the Italian psyche. Possibly that is partly why it produces so many
wonderfully creative people: designers and architects and artists. I have a
friend, an Italian businessman, who tells me regularly that despite superficial
appearances, most Italians are melancholy. Perhaps, but most of them are also
deeply civilised. It is not only Italian football
that needs profound reformation, it is our attitude to
Italians and their magnificent country.
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