Calcio (soccer)

On Sunday afternoon, Alti, formally known as ragazzo italiano (will explain later), invited me to watch some soccer game with him on Sunday night. It was Milan versus some other team Inter or something, I don’t know one of the teams had blue/black stripes and the other had red/black stripes and Ronaldinho played for the red/black team. I am obviously very well informed about soccer in Europe. Anyway, I had heard so much about how crazy Europeans are about there soccer like maybe comparably to Americans with their football so I was curious to experience this phenomena first hand. I do plan to go to a Fiorentina game sometime while I’m here, but I thought I would learn just as much from this experience because it was on television and was not any of the home teams. I thought I could really gauge the intensity factor more so in this situation rather when it is obviously intensified while watching the home team play in the stadium. We went to this English Pub which was showing the game. The cover charge was six euro which covered your first beer—I thought this was weird because this is the first time I have had to pay a cover charge anywhere. But, it made more sense once we got inside…the bar is FULL with Italian men (maybe five other women). There is no place to sit and half the people are standing up with their eyes glued to the screen. And even though the bar is full it is almost silent. This is NOT like American men watching any old football game. This is more like a bar crowded with versions of my brother watching the Seahawks. In case you don’t know my brother Andrew, he is the definition of passion while watching his favorite football team. It is painful experience for him if they are not playing up to their potential and everyone knows in the family to give him some space after a bad game. The men are not concerned with chatting with friends or even with flirting with the (small amount) of women present, they are clearly here to watch the game. They are silent engulfed in their zeal only when there is a good shot or questionable tackle are there are uniform grunts or exclamations. When Ronaldino scores a beautiful goal (header to the top right corner), does it really go crazy. I guess there were a lot of Milan fans there because the majority of the group jumps up and just starts yelling. For about five minutes. Way longer than normal celebration time of goals. The game ends 1-0. I thought it was kind of boring—but I was entertained by watching the people.

Devastating news about mio ragazzo italiano, he is actually Albanian! He moved here when he was eighteen. He grew up in communist Albania which was his reason for not practicing a religion…haha but communist Albania is definitely interesting to hear about. He is still fluent in Italian so I will still call him mio ragazzo italiano. I was slightly disappointed that he is not Italian—but it actually makes sense because he has a job, car, and doesn’t live with his mom—and that is rarely accomplished by Italian men before the age of 40.