Full Text

Why, wonders Simon Martin near the beginning of his masterful analysis of sport's impact on modern Italy, do most historians try to interpret the country through its art, architecture, food, music or mafia yet ignore one of its most enduring, central and revealing obsessions?

It's a good question. At peak moments, sport, which can bring millions of joyful citizens on to the streets in celebration of World Cup successes, has shown itself capable of transforming the very idea of Italy and its politics. And, as the bitter hatred in the 1980s between southern giants Napoli and the clubs of Turin and Milan showed, few arenas have provided so vivid an insight into regional tensions.

Martin has given us an elegantly structured and meticulously researched history of modern Italy from an unexpected angle.

Sport is now routinely discussed in the context of economics, politics and culture. But few writers have managed to demonstrate that sport can also shape these wider forces. Despite its title this is not a book about a ‘love affair' so much as a rich and sharply observed exploration of this new power.

Games in their modern form first arrived in the peninsula in the mid-19th Century with German-style gym clubs. When we think of the combination of sport with militant nationalism and militarism we tend to think of fascism. But, in the wake of the Risorgimento, it was Italian liberals who got there first.

Early gymnastic societies had names such as Strength and Courage and a writer in the magazine Educazione Politica declared an aim of physical exercise in schools should be to ‘give tomorrow's Italian citizens a healthy courage to kill for the freedom of the nation'.

As sport of all kinds boomed in the early 20th Century both the political Left and the Catholic Church were ambivalent. Some socialists regarded sport as a distraction from building class unity.

Mussolini, however, had no doubts about the usefulness of a medium that could be made to fit neatly with fascist ideas of virility, heroism and courage. For Mussolini sport was a way to project the national prestige of Italy- as when its team won the World Cup in 1934 and 1938. Sport could also stimulate the ‘physical and moral improvement of the race'.

Sports organizations fell under fascist control, stadiums were built in huge numbers and Il Duce was depicted as ‘Sportsman Number One', photographed swimming, sailing, skiing, fencing and riding motor bikes.

The significance of sport scarcely diminished after Liberation but now reflected a new brand of politics. The epic rivalry between cyclists Gino Bartali and Fausto Coppi mirrored and fuelled the struggle between Socialists and Christian Democrats.

Martin deploys a cast of sometimes tragic characters adeptly. These include the diminutive, drug-assisted and doomed cyclist Marco Pantani, who died in 2004 of cocaine poisoning and the blackshirt-wearing heavyweight boxing champion Primo Carnera, who was first lionized by the adroitly manipulative fascist sports newspapers then spat out by them when he lost to Jewish, black and gypsy opponents.

When, in the early 1990s, the tangentopoli corruption scandals destroyed the Christian Democrats and their allies who had dominated politics for 50 years, sport was left standing as almost the only political currency that counted.

Silvio Berlusconi's success in turning AC Milan, the football team he owned, into the best and most glamorous in the world assisted his rise to power almost as much as his media empire. The language of sport and power fused: Italian politics was ‘footballized'.

Berlusconi announced his entry into political arena with a sporting metaphor - ‘entering the field' - then promised to make the nation as successful as AC Milan. He even named his political party Forza Italia! (Go Italy!) after a football chant.

Even as Italy now painfully picks its way through the wreckage left by the Berlusconi years, Martin argues that sport continues to play an important and largely positive role in unifying a nation beset by problems.

By curious coincidence Italian football history has just repeated itself.

At the 1970 World Cup the azzurri beat the Germans in an epic semi-final and were then crushed a few days later in the final by the beautiful football of the best team in history, the Brazil of Pelé and Jairzinho.

At this summer's Euro 2012 championship the azzurri once again beat Germany in an epic semi-final and were then crushed a few days later in the final by the beautiful football of the best team in history. This time that team was Spain - the brand new Spain, that is, of Xavi and Iniesta.

Spain's triumph was remarkable on many levels. For decades, Italy - along with Germany and Brazil - was the international football super-heavyweight. Spain, despite its potent club teams was no more than a middleweight.

Then in 2008, Spain's national team, newly dubbed La Roja (The Reds - a name unthinkable in Franco's day) changed identities.

Spain's national team had previously been run by men such as Javier Clemente, the no-nonsense coach of the old school who admired Andoni Goikoetxea, the notoriously aggressive ‘Butcher of Bilbao'.

Now, at last, under the guidance of Luis Aragonés, Spain finally ditched its ancient Furia Española - the muscular ‘Spanish Fury' style first developed in the Basque country and later promoted by Franco and fascism - and instead adopted the sophisticated, technical modern tiki-taka of FC Barcelona.

Tiki-taka is derived from Holland's ‘Total Football' of the 1970s and heavily influenced by the teachings of Johan Cruyff, the Dutch former Barcelona player and coach. Xavi, Iniesta and other key players were educated at La Masia, the Barcelona academy that Cruyff organised on the model of the famous Ajax youth system in Amsterdam.

Spain proceeded to win Euro 2008, the 2010 World Cup, and Euro 2012. Never in the history of international football has one team been so dominant. Since no opponent has yet found a way to counter tiki-taka - apart from defend like crazy and pray for a lucky break - the hegemony looks set to continue.

Spain may be suffering its worst economic crisis in decades, yet its reputation glows as never before thanks to its footballers. The question is: how did it all go so right?

The answer, as Jimmy Burns's La Roja, A Journey Through Spanish Football shows, is bound up with history and the opening up of democratic Spain after the long freeze of the Franco dictatorship.

Burns is an engaging guide in this overview of the history of the development of the Spanish game, mixing politics and history with travelogue, interviews and personal reminiscences.

He traces football's development from the late 19th Century, when it arrived with British expats, through the era of Basque domination to the Argentine influence of men such as Alfredo di Stéfano, star of the Real Madrid team of the 1950s, when the game finally began to recover and grow after the damage inflicted by civil war and Francoist repression.

Burns clears Real of the false charge often levelled by Barcelona fans of having been stooges of Franco. But he also views current success as essentially a pan-Spanish phenomenon, stressing the contributions to the national team of players from several clubs.

As for Italy, the nexus between power and football continues. Berlusconi has just announced that his party is to revive its old name, Forza Italia! four years after it adopted the less resonant title, People of Freedom. It looks like he is planning to return to power next year on a football chant.

David Winner is author of ‘Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football', and ‘Al Dente: Madness, Beauty and the Food of Rome'