Forza Italia: Corruptis in Extremis
I'll take it from the top.
I was as incensed with the Australian loss as I imagine many, many other Australians were. I don't want to go on about the penalty call too much.
I saw it. I'm well aware of the Italian style of play with regard to 'simulation'.
I didn't think it was deserved. Now that's my opinion. I didn't see an elbow go up. It's obvious that those who supported the Socceroos would be inclined to call 'bullshit', and those who supported the Italians would be inclined to call the (attempted) tackle 'bullshit' - and in the latter case thus deserved of a penalty.
What got me was the contrast not in playing style, but attitude, between the Australians and the Italian players. Had the situation become reversed, I can't imagine the Italian team reacting as the Australians did: with initial shock, anger, and then much more quickly, almost fatalistic resignation.
It might be wrong to speak in hypotheticals - based on what I've seen in this World Cup, and the last - but I'd be almost certain a team like Italy would react that way, not to even mention a team like Croatia, who might have even assaulted the referee.
The contrast in attitude I think was exemplified by a couple of things:
- Lucas Neill shaking the referees hand minutes after the decision, in a final acceptance. I felt incredibly sorry for this guy, and I think it was a cruel thing, regardless of whether it was deserved or not. Hearing reports of him sitting "despondent" in the locker room, where he no doubt was considering that he'd let not only his team down but 20 million others (not to be exaggerative, but you could my point, the weight of the decision) - which isn't true of course - really got me down.
- Francesco Totti sucking his thumb after the goal. Now I’ve seen elsewhere his over the top ‘birth’ and then thumb sucking routine, which is described as a tribute to his newly born son.
However, in this case – and maybe I’m reading too much into it – it seemed more like a “fuck you” than a tribute (perhaps in his case the two can be incorporated … ‘fuck you Australia…I love you son’). Regardless of what it was, it looked incredibly stupid, and does every time. But that’s neither here nor there.
The reason I thought it was a petty slight, was after Cahill’s own sledge against the Italians. Much less prominent, of course, in fact you’d be hard pressed to find a picture of it. Cahill made the ‘bub’ signal by running his finger up and down over his lips. This was an expression of utter frustration at the Italian legs - more malleable than the gold sprinkled Playdough Totti’s son plays with – and also at their incredible ability to fold as paper and cry as children, then be oaken and steely eyed seconds later.
I suppose their only concern is for the game, and the moment, but I bet there isn’t an Italian player out there who doesn’t feel slightly ashamed when he sees the replay of himself, rolling about like a grub in the dirt, bawling and screaming and howling in racks of pain that would surely send shivers down the spine of any torture victim.
Then again, the shame might be forgotten amidst the cheers of the crowd – born in my opinion, to extend the ‘paternal’ metaphor – out of that same epileptic routine.
But when Totti put that ball away, and I read
this story, suspicion replaced derision. What a perfect, really, an absolutely perfect model and launch for his ‘menswear collection’. He did it an almost (or perhaps not almost) pre-ordained sense of calmness and collectedness. And man, that was the PERFECT clip for Donna Versace to use at the launch of Totti’s menswear range.
“It was fitting that a man who would not look out of place on the catwalks of Milan should delay the launch of a major summer menswear collection for 2007 with the goal that booked Italy's place in the World Cup quarter-finals.
Donatella Versace erected a giant screen at her summer launch for patrons to watch the most dramatic finish to a match at this summer's finals and she was made to wait.”
I don’t want to pick on Totti too much, but he seems to personify the difference between the Italian side (and Italian football in general) and the Australian.
Here’s a guy with a clothing range
“which includes handbags, baby-grows and even the Francesco Totti pencil case”
, not to mention his football ‘school’ and his MotoGP team, ‘Totti Top Sport’. He’s well versed in diving techniques, no doubt appreciative of Grosso’s effort, as he was booked for faking a penalty against South Korea during the last World Cup. He doesn’t mind a bit of roughhousing though, as was proved when he was yellow carded during the USA game for about as blatant a trip as you can get. If Harry Kewell’s harassment of the referee after the Brazilian match was undisciplined, then Totti’s attitude – one of his finer moments includes spitting on a Danish player, two years ago, in a fit of rage – is downright animalistic.
This is a guy who has never done anything but play football, and has made incredible amounts of money doing it. Now you’d be hard pressed to find a European player who didn’t fit into that category, so it’s not a negative thing in itself depending on how you see it. But it presents that contrast.
The Italian players are overpaid, sly (or good at taking advantages, exploiting weaknesses in referees and in the systematic judgement of penalties, depending on how you want to look at it), not to mention very skilled. They play for corrupt clubs, run by greedy gangster managers, who think nothing of paying off referees and officials. They have all been conditioned from very, very young ages, to play football for said clubs, and make lots of money in the process.
Now you take a player like Scott Chipperfield. He isn’t of course considered the ‘star’ of our side (I suppose Harry Kewell takes that position), and he certainly doesn’t have as high a profile as either Totti or Italian ‘star’ keeper Gianluigi Buffon (who incidentally is under investigation for making illegal bets on the Serie A league matches). Chipperfield makes his share, certainly, playing for the lower profile Swiss Super League, which has an average attendance of eight and a half thousand people, compared with the thoroughly corrupt Serie A, which has an average attendance of twenty-five thousand. I suppose television ratings work to a similar ratio. He’s probably been playing for his whole life too, but I don’t think the Wollongong Wolves have the kind of cash any of these European clubs do, which groom players from very young ages in a variety of different ways. He worked as a bus driver in the Gong when he was playing for the Wolves.
Now obviously that sounds very workaday and earthy in comparison to the high priced prancing Italian sides, with guys like Buffon (again – this guy is the highest paid goalkeeper in the world, but something like sixty million Euros isn’t enough, which is why he bets on fixed matches in order to make more…funny, the highest paid keeper in the world seems to be one of the most dishonest) and Totti. And there are high paid Australians, with ad campaigns and all the rest (not to the same extent of course), but there’s a distinct difference in attitude between the two teams.
Serie A, the attention grabbing Italian league, is typified by high profile clubs fixing matches, bribing officials, influence peddling (including attempts at bribing politicians for various favours), and illegal betting on matches by players. This is of course all driven by greed – as if these guys didn’t get paid enough – generally on the part of management but also on the part of certain players. Including as I said, the national team’s goalkeeper, who according to the Guardian, was revealed by phone taps to have bet half a million Euros on a single match, and in total more than two million Euros. Half a million bucks. I guess I would bet that much on a ‘sure thing’.
The same article goes on,
‘Italy's coach, Marcello Lippi, has been forced publicly to deny claims that callups to the national side have been influenced by business interests. And the national team's captain, Fabio Cannavaro, has been implicated in further claims of skulduggery. Cannavaro is said to have deliberately underperformed at his former club, Inter, in order to facilitate a move to Juventus two years ago. Italy's FA are rudderless after their top two officials were forced to stand down, and prosecutors in Rome and Naples are probing GEA World, the management company that handles more transfers in Italy than any other. GEA World is run by Alessandro Moggi, son of Luciano Moggi, the man at the centre of the investigation. Moggi senior quit as general manager of Juventus after being heavily implicated.
The authorities are looking into allegations of abuse of GEA's 'dominant position' in football and allege that both father and son used threats and violence to conduct their business.”
Now his public denial of such means it got to the point that fans and probably certain officials were concerned about the Italian national side being involved with corruption and influence peddling, and also were concerned about the Italian team being painted with the same brush as Juventus and the various other corrupt clubs.
I don’t know whether they should or not, but since they represent the cream of Italian club football – and assumedly the Australian side represents the best players that we can lay claim to, whether they play overseas regularly or not – and something like 13 out of the total team number play in the 4 ‘superclubs’ named as being under investigation in Italy, I think concern about corruption is justified.
Those out there, who say that Italy was the ‘better team’, might be right. I guess it depends what you mean by better team. Technically more proficient, maybe. More manipulative of the systematic processes (whether that occurred between gangsters and even less respectable corrupt FIFA officials behind closed doors, or between gangster managers and the referee behind closed doors, or by faking injury on the penalty line – and just look at the way Grosso screams on the photos, regardless of whether he tripped, he howls as though he’s just had a sledgehammer in the back), definitely. Defensively, very effective, well, for sure.
But if you consider better to mean, as Cahill said, “honest”, a team with no World Cup experience, representing a country with very, very little World Cup experience, where football/soccer is considered not particularly popular (in compared with cricket or the other footballs), a country where under-11s is a hell of a lot of fun, and you get oranges at the end of the game - rather than electrolyte replacement formulas, with a couple million to spend on the weekend, paid by the club that’s ‘conditioning’ you – then I’d say we did a hell of a lot better.
Pele named a few of the Italian players as among the 125 best players in the world. And a bunch of people have called Totti a ‘great player’, or Buffon a ‘great player’, or even the Oscar-worthy performing artist Grosso a ‘great player’ – and I’ve heard Italy described as a ‘great team’.
Sure, you can call them a ‘good team’. But as one guy said, I think a great player is one who takes a team somewhere they’ve never been before.
Well, I think everyone who played took us a little bit of the way, whether it was Kewell or Cahill, or Lucas or Chipperfield. Everyone did a bit. And we sure got somewhere we’d never been before. It hurts that we would have played Ukraine next, and I feel we would have won, thus taking us into the semis.
That we didn’t hurts. But if a great player takes a team where they’ve never been, then a great team takes a country there, and our boys sure did that.
Let’s hope the effect on football’s popularity lasts, because I think it’s such an engaging and emotionally affecting game that it’s establishment here as a sport on the same level (and regard, and hopefully pay and media attention) as say, rugby league, could never be a bad thing.
Anyway blah blah blah
