Heat butts, gladiators and birth rates

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World cup madness hit hard after the USA-Italy debacle faded from memory. We watched most of the games in various piazzas around town, sitting on newspapers and smashed in between sweaty, screeching and overly-involved spectators. I buffed up on insults, which the Italians doled out without reprise to their players. All of the games ended with hugging complete strangers and sprays of beer and champagne. The final game was intense. When Zidane gave the infamous “testata” (head-butt) the people went wild. Racist slurs abounded. When Italy won the penalty kicks, the entire city erupted. Vespas with the tricolore were all over the streets and sidewalks, fans overtook buses and jumped on their roofs to ride through the city and all of the piazzas were filled with drum circles, dancing and fireworks.

The next few days were consumed with debate on what Materazzi could have said to have provoked Zidane. The lip readers pronounced authoritatively that he either insulted his mother or sister, called him a terrorist or accused his relatives of fighting with the French during the Algerian war for independence. The Italias were ready to forgive anything except the insult to the mother. There was a full article on the response of the mother of Zidane: "If Materazzi called him a terrorist, I want to see his testicles on a serving tray." Materazzi pled ignorance, claiming that he didn't even know what "terrorist" meant. Other consipracy theories heard in bars, trains and Totocalcio negozi were that the French snorted cocaine in the locker room at the half and that the Calciopoli game-rigging scandal had reached all the way to the Mondiali.

The headline of the Repubblica showed the bus of the Azzurri riding into the Circus Maximus and read “Mother Rome hugs her Gladiators.” And there they all were, dressed in Dolce and Gabbana suits among almost a million people. The papers went so far as to say that they expected amnesty from the soccer scandals for the players, political unity for the country after a divisive election, a 2% increase in GDP and even a temporary improvement for the declining birth rate.

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