Post #1. Hooray!

On Saturday 17th November 2007 I was briefly an ABI myself, but I'd recovered by about a week later.

Marvellous, it's up.

Now that the old board has disappeared down a black hole, I suppose we'll never know who posted the last message on the World Cup forum.

Ma che cazza? 's wrong with Italy? Siamo campeoni del mondo! And we did it playing some reasonably attractive football along the way, too.

Just because you English treat defensive organization as an afterthought doesn't mean you have to slag off those who treat it with respect.

Why? Too long spent working in a brazenly corrupt Italian bank. And because of the endemic corruption within Italian football. Because of knife usage as part of the standard method of supporting ones club. And because the British cultural cringe towards Italy makes me want to puke. And because of Materazzi. And because of that thing they do with their hands.

I love that thing they do with their hands. Like Italian design, it subtly and efficiently achieves what an English player would take five expletives to do.

I used to love Italian football. It was a channel 4 thing, that festered long enough to blossom in to full blown Azzuriism in USA 94. Oh whilst all my friends in the playground were Platt, Gascoigne or Walker, I was Albertini, Donadoni AND Il Divino Codino. I wore only lotto boots. I ate only pasta and pizza. I over gelled my hair to try and make me look less like the awkward English kid I was and more like the passionate Mediterranean man I wanted to be.

Then I grew up and realised Italy were a bunch of dicks, and I wanted no more to do with them. Football wise. Besides, I was too busy being French by then to have any time to be Italian any more.

But you have that fabulous mediterannean beard...kind of Zambrotta-ish.

Ah Zambrotta-ish. Sums me up perfectly. I aim for Cantonesque, I peak at Zambrotta-ish. I can't even manage Gattuso-like.

I wish Italy no real harm. That is saved for Spain, who I now regard as the Scousers of Europe. Not for any major cultural reason - you'd have to go some to mirror the cultures of Liverpool and Spain - but because so much of the personnel will be similar. Torres, Xabi Alonso, Reina (is he even in the squad, you'd hope not), all those anonymous other reserves that Fat Rafa signed.

Oh, I hope they fail. I hope Hobbes with his one eight Spanishness cries himself to sleep every game night. I hope the people of the Basque region, and of Catalunya dance their traditional regional dances (should they entertain anti-national team sympathies, obv) as Spain get knocked out painfully early once more.

ABI for the foreseeable future. I'll reassess after the retirement of Totti, Daniela Rossi, Materazzi, General Zod's henchman, Buffoon, and Del Piero.

QUOTE:
Siamo campeoni del mondo!

The best bit about this thread is understand Italian phrases such as this one.

It means 'call me a taxi, I'm late for my plane', yes?

Oh, and because of Inzaghi.

Wow, I'd actually forgotten all about him for a while there. I wondered why I was feeling so cheerful. Then I remembered and a cloud passed across the sun.

Don't forget their appalling pop music and television. For that alone they deserve to suffer.

jv, how can you possibly hate Buffon? They dragged the man out of Plato's cave, for Christ's sake. He is the Idea of a Goalkeeper.

EIM - Your beard might make Gattuso in a pinch. The problem is you're tall and thin while Gattuso is short and squat. And deep-down, you're not a Scotsman.

Liq, I just hope someone is meeting you at the airport when you get to Rome.

They'll all be too busy gelling their hair, or letching at tits to notice the inherent rightness of my statement.