CBC Sports Online's soccer expert, John Molinaro, takes you inside the world of soccer and offers his insights about the action on the pitch and in the front office.
Soccer fever for Italian sports journalists
Comments (3)
Tuesday, October 16, 2007 | 12:17 PM ET
CBCSports.ca soccer expert John F. Molinaro is on vacation in Rome for a month. While there, he plans on eating a pile of prosciutto, soaking up the warm Italian sun and watching a lot of soccer.
This is one crazy town.
This is my third trip to Rome, the Eternal City, but I still get thrown for a loop by the culture shock.
The frenetic pace of this city makes you dizzy. The traffic is nuts. You can hear televisions blaring from apartments from street level. Instead of sitting in a Starbucks and nursing a coffee for an hour, Romans steal away from the office and go to the corner cafe where they take a quick swig of espresso before scampering back to work.
And they love their soccer, or calcio, as the Italians call it.
I just picked up copies of La Gazzetta dello Sport and Il Corriere dello Sport, the two top sports dailies here in Italy, and as I'm thumbing through them I quickly realize they are misleadingly named. Soccer dominates the coverage and takes up the majority of the paper; coverage of the remaining sports is relegated to the back pages.
The first 25 pages of today's 36-page edition of Il Corriere are about soccer. Everything from all the latest news and transfer rumours in Serie A to reports on games from Italy's amateur leagues. La Gazzetta only dedicates the first 19 pages to soccer, but it does include a special eight-page insert on AS Roma and Lazio, the city's two Serie A clubs.
And if you think people here can't possibly read that much about soccer on a daily basis, think again - the first two newsstands I went to were sold out of copies of both newspapers.
Il Corriere's lead story is about local officials preventing fans from attending Saturday's game between AS Roma and Napoli. Tensions always run high when these clubs meet in Il Derby Del Sole (the Derby of the Sun), so the municipal government is trying to force Roma to play the game behind close doors. The team is trying to fight this in court and I hope to God they succeed because I have tickets for that game!
La Gazzetta's top story is a feature item titled "Mercato: Dall'Inter al Livorno, le strategie delle 20 di a chi serve a chi" - "Transfer marker: Who needs who - From Inter to Livorno, the strategies of the 20 Serie A clubs."
Even though the Serie A season is only seven weeks old, La Gazzetta saw fit to break down the needs of each team, highlighting what players they should sign in order to improve.
And we think the Toronto newspapers are bad when they proclaim in December the Leafs have no chance of making the playoffs!
Ciao,
John
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About the Author
John F. Molinaro is a reporter for CBC Sport Online whose chief love is international soccer. John served as senior editor of Sports Online's Euro 2004 website, which helped him win a CBC.ca Award of Excellence, and was the driving force behind our coverage of the 2006 FIFA World Cup. He holds an honours BA in sociology from York University and a print journalism diploma from Sheridan College, and is also the author of The Top 100 Pro Wrestlers of All Time (Stewart House, 2002).
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Comments (3)
JOHN G
Hope Johnny is staying safe is Italy! Maybe CBC should hire me so we can read about a real football league, one without cheaters and cheater teams.....
Can't wait to your next blog, which I'm sure will be all about another aspect of Italian football....
Posted October 17, 2007 10:23 AM
Paul
Spike - hope you're enjoying Rome. Have another slice of pizza for me!
Posted October 17, 2007 08:56 PM
raffaele
toronto
hey john g. i hope your not insinuating italy's serie A is the only league with a sports scandal here or there. don't forget NBA refs, janet gretzky, the english league scams etc etc. The difference is italy is always under the microscope. If ferrari stole from Mclaren every household in the world would know. when asked of the scandal most people say...what's mclaren? The beauty of it all is that the players came together and won the greatest trophy in the world for the FOURTH TIME!!! in the summer of 2006. How do you like them apples!
Posted October 17, 2007 09:06 PM