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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lichtenhart" data-source="post: 235681" data-attributes="member: 761">Ok, as the first italian to post in this thread, let me express a few thoughts.*Gaucci (President of the Perugia F.C.) is a very very stupid man. Please don't listen to him and don't judge italians by his words.*Italy is not a very united country. A thing that really unites italians is soccer. Soccer is in italian DNA, it's probably the first game taught to children when they learn to walk, even though is not the sport Italy scores best in. We have won only once in the last 50 years, and other sports come to my mind (fencing, ski, boat-racing, swimming) in which we are really better. Nonetheless, at least half of every italian sport newspaper is about soccer.*When the italian team plays all works stop, and something like 40 millions people tries to find a television to watch the match, or at least to listen to it at the radio. That's two thirds of the nation, something that in the USA should be like 180 millions people watching the same thing at the Tv. Try to imagine the level of emotion involved.*All this passion has several drawbacks, one is (I'm not an exception) that every italian thinks to be a better coach than the coach, and a better referee than the referee. Many italian think that a single referee's call on an offside or a penalty can decide the outcome of our championship (34 matches). Try to explain to these people that 5 goals ruled out in 4 matches aren't determining.*It is nice and beatiful to watch in TV koreans celebrate and rejoice with them. It is not so nice and and beatiful when at the same time you can hear the forty millions people mentioned before fall in an astonished silence. You could hear the wind in the streets.*Italian linesmen were rejected by FIFA because "not equal to the task". Ironic, isn't it?*Not one italian that I know complained about the outcome of Italy-Korea because he's a whiner. Not one said that Italy couldn't have played better (on the contrary, many wanted coach Trapattoni's head). They complained because they felt they have been wronged. It's not a habit. There was nothing like this in 1998.*I (and many other italians) don't think korean players are in any way responsible for this. I do think that now Korea team has to show they're really one of the four best soccer teams in the world. I don't think they deserve the reputation they they got so far thanks to the referees.Go Korea! Go Germany! Go Brazil! Go Turkey!May the better win.</blockquote>

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