Politics, power and soccer in postwar Italy: The case of Naples

Abstract

Fittingly, for a nation that has given the world the Renaissance, grand opera and Machiavelli, a history of Italian soccer reveals a beguiling mixture of the artistic, the overblown and the scheming. Unlike football played in Spain, Germany or France, say, Italian soccer possesses a uniquely seductive quality that often amounts to more than the sum of its parts. This is because soccer in Italy is not as it is in other countries: this is a nation where the largest selling daily newspaper (Gazzetta della Sport) is dedicated almost entirely to soccer, and where two other popular daily newspapers focus on sport (mainly soccer), where one of its much discussed and controversial prime ministers, Silvio Berlusconi (1994-1995, 2001-2006, 2008-2011), owned and still owns one of the league’s most famous clubs (AC Milan), and where the political organization he founded in 1994 was named after the chant to encourage the national team (Forza Italia, i.e., Let’s Go, Italy!). Soccer, it seems, is Italy, and Italy is soccer, and so, inevitably, a narrative about the game cannot help but be a narrative about the country as a whole-its dynamics, its preoccupations, its outlook and its problems-and about its politics, its history and its identity.