Seven days and counting. And even I, very much a part timer when it comes to football fanhood, have had a couple of shivers of anticipation at the festival about to engulf the globe.
The 2006 world cup was my first insider insight into how Italy play football. As with many other things – lingerie, gelato, embroidered jackets, opera, the Catholic church – it made a different sort of sense when seen through Italian eyes. England’s first game – I can’t even remember who it was against – made me feel itchy. It was disorderly, chaotic, stoppy-starty, inconsistent, just annoying viewing. Then I watched Italy’s first game and it was like watching a different sport. It really did resemble ballet! There was fluidity in the movement, the team worked together, the ball invisibly joined between adjacent feet, it was smooth, calm feeling, almost like slow motion. It didn’t make me feel itchy at all. It actually made me think I could learn to love football. And it certainly made me love Italy even more.
Then their second game was a bloodbath – that awful match against USA which ended with mutiple sendings off and bleeding heads and I felt that everything that was magical a few days earlier had been betrayed. This was brutality – cheating, faking, diving and barbaric desperate clawing for control. I hated football again.
But I couldn’t quite forget that first game. And in Italy the possibility of being allowed to miss a match was – well it wasn’t possible. And then Italy got through and through. And even though there was never again the splendour, at least there was no more blood.
And then it was the final. Italy against France. A rivalry which conjures in Italians feelings every bit as strong (and in some ways deeper rooted) as England vs Germany. We went early with friends to get a seat in front of the massive outdoor screen erected in the piazza in Mogliano. The screen and chairs (plus motley other furniture brought out from bars and homes) filled every paved inch of this tiny medieval quadrant. The atmosphere was unbelievable, fury at the French palpable in every touch of the ball – and all this fury frothing up into an explosion at the infamous moment when Zidane headbutted Materazzi and was sent off. The bloodlust for his departure would have been more appropriate for a hanging.
Full time. It was 1-1. Extra time. Still 1-1. Penalties. The word that inspires terror in the hearts of the hard. The injustice! The inelegance! The make or break of a reputation. For proper football fans, torture. For me, the best bit. The drama of the penalty shoot out is unrivalled. It is immense. And breathing it with a couple of thousand wired Italians squeezed into a too small outdoor living room was one of the most thrilling moments of pure pleasure I’ve ever shared.
The moment of victory was, for a micro-second, a disappointment. The life-affirming tension was over. But then the celebrations began. From nowhere, cars and little 3-wheeled apes and scooters and people were everywhere, saturated in red white and green, tearing around, making as much noise and mess and movement as was possible. The partying went on all night.
