What’s Calcio, and for that matter what’s Serie A mean?
It’s the Italian word for soccer, but it also carries with it the Italian style of soccer. Serie A (pronounced Ah) literally means A Series, as in the A level of competition. Though there is a move to totally revamp the structure, there is also Serie B and Serie C1 and C2.
Who are the seven sisters?
The teams considered to be the core of Italian soccer, Parma, Lazio, AC Milan, Fiorentina, Inter Milan, Juventus, and AS Roma. Even before Fiorentina went bankrupt, the landscape of Serie A had changed to the point that this title carried little meaning. Name the biggest teams in Italy, and you’ll likely have gotten all of them.
How do I follow Serie A in English?
The live games are shown on Fox Soccer Channel. The Football Italia website has quality coverage in English.
What are the big rivalries?
Like most leagues, any two teams in the same city: Lazio and AS Roma in Rome, Juventus and Torino in Turin, and Inter and AC in Milan. Taking the seven sisters as our guide, most of those teams are everybody else’s rival. And you’re either with Juventus or against them.
So is Juventus Italy’s biggest club?
Yes, they are, following in the same tradition as Manchester United, the New York Cosmos, and Mexico’s Club America. Oddly though, they don’t have the biggest number of fans willing to pay to see them. That would be AS Roma. Juventus has the hearts and minds though, seriously threatening to move from Turin if they didn’t get a new stadium and openly saying they could play anywhere in Italy. Such is their following.
Why don’t we hear more about the big Italian clubs in the US?
It depends on where you live, but the big Italian clubs have large American followings, particularly in the Northeast, just like the other major European teams. The language barrier is an issue, along with the kind of blanket English -language coverage the Premier League and even Major League Soccer get by comparison. It’s common to see people wearing Serie A apparel in US cities.
Is the president of Italy really involved in Serie A?
He's the Prime Minister, and yes, Silvio Berlusconi is the longtime owner of AC Milan. When he became prime minister, he turned over the club’s operations to a relative. Though Italy has a president and technicallythe prime minister is fourth in the hierarchy, it's the prime minister that serves as head of state and is the equivalent of the US President.
I’ve heard that Italian soccer is overly defensive.
There’s too much built into the idea that the catenaccio style of soccer is defensive. You’re better off thinking of it as tactically tricky, requiring more than one standout player to change the run of play. The traditional Italian style emphasizes the sweeper as the most technically proficient player on a squad, basically controlling the game from the back. This causes the run of play to develop closer to goal than a standard flat back four formation typically found in England. To put it simply, “overly defensive” can easily be confused with “tactically adept” and you can see creative ways to breakdown the defense each week in Serie A.
What about the cheating?
Italian club soccer does have a reputation for under the table dealings deciding the outcome of games. That took an unexpected turn during 2006 when Juventus ended up relegated and stripped of the 2005 and 2006 titles during the Calciopoli scandal. Note to clubs, don't let a club employee get caught intimidating referees. Milan and Lazio were relegated in 1980 for cheating.
Why are there so many high-priced players in Italy? Some of their squads look like all-star teams.
Though there is player identification and classification from an early age, player development isn’t as centered around the big clubs like in other countries. There are no reserve teams in Italian soccer, so the clubs buy the best professionals they can afford from all over the world. For a club with lots of spending money, this can result in their backups being better than most first teams. Given the economics of European soccer, this is changing. But a look at the transfer records show Italian clubs involved in most of the big deals.
What’s with the patch for defending league champions?
It’s called the scudetto, and it’s a shield with the colors of the Italian flag. A club wears it during the season they’re defending their championship, and for every ten scudettos they get a gold star added to their club crest. Juventus has won 26 times, AC Milan 16, and Inter Milan 13. Torino had won five scudettos in the late 1940’s, but 18 members of their team, including the bulk of the national team, were killed in a plane crash in 1949 changing the landscape of Italian soccer forever.
OK, how about the stripes? Is this just Italian fashion?
It’s an often repeated story, but Juventus got the idea for the stripes in the early 1900’s after seeing England’s Notts County. They wore black and white stripes, Juventus copied them, and the other Italian clubs adopted similar styles.
What about the Coppa Italia? I’ve heard it’s treated like a joke.
Though it’s spreading to other countries, Italian clubs have long considered league standing their first priority as the entry into European competition. The Coppa Italia is far behind the league, and for the more successful clubs the UEFA Cup and Champions League. Like we told you earlier, there are no reserve sides so you don’t see severely weakened teams in the Coppa Italia, but it’s taken for granted that even medium-sized clubs have more pressing concerns during the season.
So who should I root for?
Well, we aren't advising you to pony up the cash for an Alessandro Del Piero Juventus jersey quite yet, but you would have a decent amount of company in the US. Lazio (right wing) and Roma (left wing) split the capital down the middle, down to their very different political leanings. Paolo Maldini is one of the classiest defenders to ever play the game as his career with AC Milan wraps up.
As for American connections, they are few and far between. Danny Szetela plays for Brescia in Serie B. Alexi Lalas played for Padova for a season, but they are in Serie C1 at the moment. Castel di Sangro, the team chronicled in the book The Miracle of Castel di Sangro went out of business in 2005. Their replacement, Pro Castel Di Sangro, is currently in the sixth level of Italian soccer.
Former MetroStars defender Roberto Donadoni spent his formative years with AC Milan as did Nicola Caricola with Juventus. San Jose midfielder Ronnie O'Brien was signed by Juventus, but never actually played.
You could always choose to follow a player like Ronaldinho or Kaka with Milan, Luis Figo or Hernan Crespo at Inter Milan, Simone Inzaghi at Lazio, Francesco Totti with Roma, etc. Or you could go old school with the great Milan team of the early 90's that had Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit, the Juventus squads with Zinadine Zidane and Edgar Davids, or Diego Maradona and Napoli.
