Qual è la posta??!! (Italia … 2 THE COUNTRY OF MY BIRTH … 0)

Battered in Bari? Pumelled in Puglia? Well, Ci e No.

I don’t know about you but I can never punt against my own team. Tonight that Little Rule of Loyalty cost me some dough. All day, when asked for a genuine prediction about how I felt the game would go, I’d said 2-0 for the Italians.

You always get the kind of diddy who thinks it’s a betrayal to predict your own team will lose. You tend to find these are the folk who’ve spent about 20p total in their entire life on footballl-related activities - they’ve learned their football-supporting techniques from the school playground and never really changed them since because, in reality, they’ve never got more into the game than they were at age 8-and-two-thirds.

For people like you and I - people who don’t like to blow so loud because we LIVE the game and know that it’s far from fun or big or clever to REALLY love club and country FC - we know the only sin is when you start telling your team, from the terraces, DURING THE GAME, that they’re pish or that you think they’ll lose 2-0 to, say, two Luca Toni headers.

I can’t bet against Rangers or Scotland - not because I think objective reasoning dampens the fire of your subjective passions, but because it would confuse the hell out of me during the match itself:

Admitted, I didn’t think about the first goalscorer/correct score double today. I didn’t actually get as far as saying “and I’d take Toni for the first goal” but say I had: After 12 minutes the Id would slowly start to overtake the Super-Ego and I’d be psychologically fucked. The money would be a side issue - I ain’t no big punter (well, I’m BIG as in ” a 20-stone punter” but I don’t BET big … ) - that wouldn’t really be the quandry. It’d be the little Ego inbetween: That part of me which wants to be known as “a guy who really knows his football” would be wrestling with that slightly older part of me, “a total wean who just LOVES to see his team win”.

But. Really. There was never any danger of Scotland doing anything other than losing tonight.

When Italy beat you 2-0, it’s as good as 1-0 or 10-0. They’re gonna beat you, in Italy, and they’re not worried about how many goals they score to do it because Italy are winning for every minute of the game. They concentrate and work at such a rate that they become the footballing equivelant of a cat escaping a flying human boot: The Italian giocatori have broken life down to such small, workable components that you’ll never catch them - they see every second as a minute, every minute as an hour: This renders their reactions so much quicker coz they can pack so much thought and action into passages of time so small that us Brits and most other peoples can’t even begin to …

OH, FOR FUCK’S SAKE, ECK -

… ITALY ARE MUCH BETTER AT FITBAW THAN US!! Alright??!!

Sorry. Mi Dispiace. That’s all I was trying to say.

Gli Azzurri are the Campioni del Mondo (Sic?). They’re the pyoor official best team on the planet and have been three times before now. Italy have great football in their genes and they have solid defending in their DNA. They also have winning-at-all-costs as a birthright. The game’s shifted to Bari, the Scottish national anthem is slowed to a passion-killing pace and all the usual histrionics - or, as they’re better known, Marco Materazzi - come into play during the game, to add to the general confusion: It looks like Scotland gifted them the first goal but - hey - we don’t know what kind of shit had gone on to screw with the heads of Ferguson or McManus, two excellent players, before they let a six foot, four inch, world class striker walk onto a ball at the front post without his Mammy or Daddy or any kind of babbysitter.

The second goal was the Parmigiano on the risotto alla sbirraglia but, even with Boyd, Miller, Maloney and Beattie on the bobbling Bari pitch, we were never gonna score.

I’d love to see the day where Scotland go to Italy and kick the shit out the home side while also leathering three or four past them but, until that fantasy island day comes to pass, I’ll settle for being joint-top of this suicidally impossible EURO 2008 qualifying Group at the half-way stage. Proud as punch. Other nations have a reputation for surrendering.

And - hey - who knows how well we’d have done if we’d just hung onto Le Guen … oh no, wait a minute - wrong team …

One last thought: Barry Ferguson was the BBC’s Man of the Match. The hopelessly boring Ian McCall (Him and Paul Mitchell??!! What the … ??!! Why??!! The USUAL commentating crime is to impose a level of gravitas, excitability and import on a meaningless lower league game - how can they get away with doing the opposite??!!) said he looked like the only Scot on show who could have played for Italy. If any watching italian clubs agree, could Walter have an extra £8-10Million in the coffers this summer??!!

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Published:
03.28.07 / 9pm
Category:
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