Italy, the first country in Europe to be hit by Covid, host Turkey in the tournament’s opening match, with both hoping to go farThe first thing you notice about Rome on the eve of Europe’s biggest carnival is that it does not exactly feel like a place on the verge of a carnival. Instead, like every other major city in these straitened, saddened times, it’s simply trying to survive: to get by, to salvage what’s left of what we used to call normality. The piazzas and cobbled alleys that would normally be thronged with tourists at the height of summer are populated mostly by smoking teenagers and waiters touting for business that isn’t there. If the start of Euro 2020...
Virgil van Dijk is leader of the flying Dutchmen, Kosovo are on the verge of something special and a fed up Britt abroadWhen Gareth Southgate needed to turn the tide against Croatia at the World Cup, his options were limited by a lack of forward players on England’s bench. It was difficult for Southgate to alter the flow of the game and it was unsurprising to see his side run out of steam. Yet England have continued to progress since then and offered an indication of their greater strength in depth when they reached the Nations League finals at Croatia’s expense. What a difference it made for Southgate to introduce Dele Alli, Jesse Lingard and Jadon Sancho after Andrej Kramaric...
You can win the World Cup only if everyone is together as Italy were under Marcello Lippi in 2006, says the still glowing defenderWinning a World Cup is the best feeling that a footballer can experience. It is something I – and so many people – dreamed about as a child and actually to do it is an incredible emotion that stays with you for the rest of your life.Clearly winning the World Cup is not very easy. Only 20 teams have done it so far and I can count myself lucky to be among those few people in the world who have had that feeling. Related: What next for Italy after their failure to qualify for the World Cup?...
Italian project is being undermined by imminent economic turmoil and the absence of renovation work at the Marco Simone course north of RomeIt is unlikely the Ryder Cup features prominently in the minds of Italian politicians as they seek a solution to the latest bout of instability. Those presiding over the Ryder Cup, however, simply cannot ignore what is a crisis in Rome, even by Italian governmental standards.The political chaos threatening imminent ecomonic turmoil coincides neatly with the most significant date in Italy’s golf calendar – the Italian Open is this week – while the sport has been high up the news agenda after Francesco Molinari, the nation’s pre-eminent player, saw off Rory McIlroy to win PGA Championship on Sunday. Related:...
Italy should have seen off Haiti with ease in 1974 but the group game burst into life through the unheralded Emmanuel Sanon …The win-or-bust, tension-ratcheting final rounds of the World Cup allow memorable moments and dramatic sub-plots to breed like bacteria on a soggy handkerchief. Italy v Haiti, however, was the opening game of Group Four, a match which the heavy favourites won by a two-goal margin. And yet it was a day when one man rose into legend and another crashed into infamy; an afternoon knitted with spectacular yarns and statistical curiosities and embellished with one of the sport’s most controversial substitutions.We should start, though, with qualification, a process through which one side sailed with record-breaking ease, while the...