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Italy's soccer fans hardly aware of Turin Olympics

People watch a soccer game on a television screen in the lounge of a hotel in the Sestriere ski resort, Italy, on Sunday. Last week, Italians celebrated their first gold medal of the games, the luge triumph of veteran Armin Zoeggeler. But the news wasn't as big as the matchup between first-place Juventus and second-place Internazionale. PHOTO: AP

Silvio Faure is a lonely man in a lonely place.

He sits on a barstool all alone watching Italy beat Canada in Olympic curling as four men play cards at a table nearby.

It's easy to explain why he doesn't have more company: Around the corner at the Roxy Bar, about 100 people are huddled around a TV, gesticulating, swearing and grimacing as they cheer on Turin soccer team Juventus.

Even in the valley hosting Alpine events, soccer is king, upstaging even the Olympics being beamed around the world.

"In Italy, soccer is a true passion," Claudio Zanbernardi, 29, said during the halftime break at the Roxy. "The Olympics are a passing fancy that will be extinguished along with the Olympic flame."

Last week, Italians celebrated their first gold medal of the games -- the luge triumph of veteran Armin Zoeggeler. But the news wasn't as big as the matchup between first-place Juventus and second-place Inter Milan.

At the Casa FISI, the Italian sports federation's R&R venue in the Alps, guests at a champagne-soaked celebration for Zoeggeler's victory couldn't resist slinking downstairs to catch glimpses the Juventus-Inter match.

"After women, there is soccer. Then comes culture, and then politics. That is the scale of values."

Vittorio Manfredi, Juventus fan

The next morning, the front page of sports newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport showed where the nation's sporting priorities lie: A huge headline trumpeted Juventus' hardly fought 2-1 victory, while Zoeggeler's gold got the silver medal treatment -- a picture of the luger with a small caption.

Gazzetta's soccer coverage ran for the first 23 pages. News about the Olympics started at page 30.

"Soccer is more than a national sport," author and social commentator Beppe Severgnini said.

"It's a national narrative. You have not been in Italy until you know what Inter Milan or Juventus did the night before. There isn't an equivalent in the United States. You have basketball season, you have baseball and you have football, three sports competing for attention. Soccer has no rival," he said.

For the minority of Italians who do not share the passion for soccer, all the hoopla can get a little annoying.

Faure, the man watching curling at the 'L Fojot bar and trattoria, didn't share his compatriots' obsession with soccer: "I like sports in general, all sports," he said.

For many Italians, however, soccer transcends sports to become a grand social equalizer.

"If you are the owner of a factory employing 500 people, on Monday you talk to any of them about soccer, and that's completely unifying," Severgnini said.

Soccer is also a way to express allegiance to one's hometown -- extremely important in a nation that was a collection of small kingdoms and city-states until national unification in 1861. The constant warfare that plagued Italy through the Middle Ages and Renaissance finds a more peaceful modern-day equivalent in soccer.

Vittorio Manfredi, who was watching the Juventus match at the Roxy, had another way to explain the place soccer holds in Italian men's hearts.

"After women, there is soccer. Then comes culture, and then politics. That is the scale of values," he said.
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