ITALIA!

Quite the evening last nite! We headed for the Circus Maximus. The city had set up 3 large screens there. In days of old they used to pack the place with some 300,000 people for the chariot races. That was probably the number last nite. I managed to film the pk shootout. We then went to Piazza Venezia, the Fori Imperiali up to the Coliseum and then back home. From the Coliseum to Piazza Venezia there was a human wave of people. It almost looked as though all of Italy was on a long march to where Mussolini 60 yrs ago used to address the crowds. Pandemonium broke out also with cars and scooters. The usual coy Italians: one must wonder just what on earth Materazzi must have said about Zidane’s mother, sister, daughter, grandmother, great-grandmother, etc. While that does not in any way justify Zizou’s gesture, few outside of Italy know that Materazzi is NO saint in the Serie A, let us say a Gattuso multiplied by 2 (or 3), and on more than one occasion has been red-carded. But, in the long run, there are no saints in world football, and the most cleaver prevail (someone remembers Maradona’s hand goal in 1986?). A pity that Zizou had to exist the national team in that manner. I went to bed at about 2 am. Tonite it’s back to the Circus Maximus as the national team arrives for their party there. Tomorrow instead it’s off to Milan’s San Siro stadium for the Stones’s concert. In 1982 at their concert in Torino, Jagger came out wearing a Paolo Rossi t-shirt. Whose t-shirt will he be wearing this time?