I heard Sivori faked his itallian heritage.

Aparently he claimed an itallian grandfather to qualify.
I remeber an iterview with Sivori's teamate who took him to see his grandfather in some itallian town.
Sivori pointed to his grandfather and his teammate pointed out, "how can he be your grandfather, he is black", Sivori smailed.

That teammate was John Charles.

ursus arctos wrote:

QUOTE:
To respond to aiatl's question above, this Miami Herald article notes that Italians accounted for 40 percent of the population of Buenos Aires in 1905 and that even in 1991, 20 percent of the Argentine population claimed Italian descent in the census.

I'm amazed it's that low. My ex is 1/4 German, 1/4 Italian, and practically all her friends have at least one grandparent if not two who were born in Europe. And she's 27. The oriundi and their ilk are a fascinating subject. Sadly in solidarity with Argentines I've already stated on my site that once a player decides to play for another country (Osvaldo, Camoranesi) he no longer counts as Argentine for my purposes. You certainly won't find an Argentine apart from his own family who celebrated Camoranesi's part in Italy's 2006 win. They were all too busy getting excited about the match officials!

But she's from BA, right, Sam?

I am pretty sure the percentage in BA is significantly higher than the rest of the country, and also that third-generation Argentines who are only 1/2 or 1/4 Italian are likely not to have identified themselves as such for the census.

I worked in Buenos Aires for a couple of months in 2004 on a project. In my group of fourteen 19-30-year-old Argentines ten had Italian surnames.

Only one had an Italian parent, the rest were mostly one-two grandparents or a great grandparent.

None of them felt anything but proudly Argentine, though many cheered for Italy in tournaments once Argentina were out but no divided loyalties.

As a fan (Makelele thread notwithstanding) of Juve and Italy I heart Camoranesi to bits, but I do wonder where it will all end in terms of international teams.


Alumnia/Cudicini for England etc, what is the point? Surely a football nation like Italy should not need to grab Camoranesi/Osvaldo etc?

I

Ursus, she's a porteña, yes. And yes you're probably right about the population split, although it wouldn't surprise me if the figures in La Plata and Rosario are similar. Both her parents' surnames are Spanish by the way - Martínez (the name she uses) and García. It's her maternal grandmothers who were from the Old Continent (although her dad's mum was conceived in Germany and born in Argentina thanks to parents who had the good sense to get the hell out before it kicked off too seriously in the mid-late 1930s...).

And she certainly wouldn't describe herself as 1/4 Italian or 1/4 German, by the way. I'm describing her that way for the purposes of this thread but she's 100% Argentine. The interesting thing with Argentines is that barely any of them would describe themselves as even a little bit Spanish. If there's Spanish lineage, the bloodline begins when the family entered the waters of the Río de La Plata, it seems. Are other Latin American countries this strongly anti-Iberian?

Just bumping this thread up to let everyone know there's one week (and eleven-and-a-half hours) to go before voting closes - at midnight BST next Monday.

Votes closed on time, and were counted. The winner's website was contacted but, unlike last year, they didn't get back to me, the ungrateful swines.

Voting was very tight indeed this year - one vote in it, in fact.

So,

drumroll please...

Click here to see who the winner is

I didn't vote, by the way. Just so that's clear.

Yeah, I would have voted for him. I think that's fair.

Scandalous. Typical Premier League bias. Serves Kelly right for writing in English.

I am shocked and stunned that nobody voted for Aristides Pertot.

Yes, Bomba, a baffling omission, I'm sure we can all agree...

I thought you'd be disappointed, Ursus. But for an Anglophone readership, Agüero got one hell of a lot of votes as well.

Yeah.

But I bet Kun's webmaster would have written you back.

Have you seen Kun's official site, though? If his webmaster couldn't find the time to reply, I'd be disappointed, because he spends fuck all time on the homepage...

Hmmmm. I sense a business opportunity for you.

Translating for Beckham hasn't hurt Sid Lowe's career.

Ha! It's a possibility, but it would help if there was anything there to translate.

Tevez's site, surprisingly, doesn't have an English-language version. I wonder...

It's a victory for common sense.