W hen gli Azzurri, the Italian National Football team, are together on the field, Italy’s citizens call themselves Italian. Other times they are veneziani, fiorentini, romani, o siciliani. Other times they walk their regional walk and talk their regional talk. But when those blue-shirted fellows step into the stadium, regional pride dies, or at least sleeps, for two forty-five-minute time slots and one long commercial break.
“Siamo tutti italiani quando giochiamo a calcio, we are all Italian when we play soccer,” Mauro Galletti told me last Friday. “It is Italy’s only form of patriotism.” Mauro is a banker from Arezzo who only makes the twenty-five minute drive to Firenze when he absolutely has to. Arezzo and Florence were enemies in the fourteenth century, you see, and the antagonism still runs strong in his blood today. Once I had him in Florence, I was going to bleed him dry. Mauro is one of my favourite students. He pays me to teach him Business English, and amidst faxes and business correspondence, he gives me weekly Italian cultural analysis for free.
“Patriotism in Italy knows nothing of the flag-waving, parade-going, band-playing, summer-picnic atmosphere you find on Independence Day in the United States,” he told me wryly. “Last time we waved that flag, they had a picnic on our heads.”
I nodded. In Italy, most families still have members who remember the Fascist years. Memories of Mussolini’s search for l’Italianità still foster the belief that patriotism is a vice rather than a virtue. Il Duce’s patriotic dream chased after the splendour of ancient Rome and was founded on “moral” bellicose activity, totalitarian government, and autocracy. Let’s just say that Italy’s brief affair with patriotism ended badly. Italians don’t like to think they will let themselves fall for it again. Mauro continued, “We found out the hard way that patriotism means you’re either extraordinarily simplistic or quite fanatic. Entrambi non convengono ad un italiano- neither is a convenient thing for an Italian. It has proved best to keep our passion for the playing field. Italians can afford to be patriotic at the stadium. But only there.”
Soccer is safe, really. The field is clearly delineated, fouls are called immediately, and the results are known in ninety minutes. Ninety minutes of proud Italian-ness. In truth, it was not the cultural movements of nineteenth-century intellectual elite nor the battles fought in two world wars that succeeded in creating an Italian identity. The efforts of modern political systems and Italy’s constant race to establish itself as a world power have failed to achieve widespread patriotic sentiment. That’s why Mauro will smilingly tell you, “Soccer has succeeded where everything else has failed.”
Stadium patriotism works out quite well. Gli Azzurri play for everyone and are careful never to step on anyone’s regional toes. At the end of the game the fiorentini, veneziani, milanesi, and siciliani are allowed to put on their regional clothing. They return to their own pizzas, pick up their precious vernacular, wallow in regional humour, and affirm their own superiority because no one in Italy makes steak or squid or pesto sauce just so. Once gli Azzurri retire, each city’s citizens remember what they own. The Renaissance belongs to Florence, and Venice has dibs on the doorway to the Orient. Rome still rules all of the Western World. The Neapolitan and his humour is still king-jester of the Regno di Napoli, and the Sicilian still looks at the Italian mainland as part of the European continent rather than part of his own pride and joy…at least until the next time La Nazionale plays and Italy, the nation, is formed once more. The welcomed “Blues” carry our improvised national pride onto the field, kicking our position on the globe around like a soccer ball. The flag is hung from window sills, and for an hour and a half, people are allowed to forget that it was Mussolini’s tri-colour excuse for two decades of power and struggle.
As we ended last week’s lesson, Mauro summed it up for me. “In essence, Italy’s flag should not be red, white, and green. People from all regions have to admit that. We may agree on nothing else, but everyone knows che l’Italia ha un cuore azzurro. Italy has a heart that’s blue.”
I smile. It’s good when students teach teachers. It makes one think that all is right in the world.
