Media watch: the good, the bad and the ugly

Articles about Serie A in English are rare these days. But, disproving the popular saying, what's rare is not always beautiful. Most of the time it's anything but. With this in mind, there will be regular posts on this blog focusing on the best and worst of writing on Italian football. This time, let's start with the good ones.

The good 

Good stuff

For the cerebral football fan, the Swiss Ramble is a must-read blog. The posts are long, but this Brit's regular dissections of the financial side of the game (and how it applies to the on-field side of things) are fascinating. His latest post on SS Lazio (know your enemy, Roma fans) is typically well-researched and informative.


Elsewhere, James Horncastle of the Guardian and Four Four Two magazine is a fine writer who knows his stuff. This week, he has a rather good piece on Totti in Four Four Two. It's well worth reading and even features a nice link to a Cucchiaio (the captain's signature move, translates as "the spoon") compilation. 

The bad

Expect the world ... but not a calcio writer who knows what he's talking about ...

It is an unfair cliché oft-spouted by Europeans that Americans know nothing about "soccer", but those who do certainly don't work in the media. This week's cringe-fest of racial stereotype and silly comparison comes from Michael J. Agovino, a writer at that most august journal, the New York Times. 

"Dreading the Americanization of Romulus and Remus" is woeful. There's no other word for it. From ridiculous comparisons to US franchises moving cities to exploit new markets, to the stupid romanticisation of the city, the team and the previous owners – it's just awful. 


Why is it that when American writers talk about Italian football, they have to load the conversation with stupid "mama mia" crap? This article is talking about how the "family-run" AS Roma will be destroyed by American capitalisation. The Sensi were worthy owners but their Roma was not, to use an Americanism, a "Ma and Pop" set-up. Franco Sensi was an oil tycoon who bought a football team in a city that would be, were it in the US, the third most populous after New York and LA. Give the small town stuff a rest. 


Agovino is worried about Thomas DiBenedetto making sensible decisions. The hiring of Luis Enrique, he agonises, "feels like a corporate American one: find out who is the best and if he cannot be lured away, eyeball the masthead and poach his deputy." Wow. No other football teams ever try to find the best. What a novel idea. It might tarnish the romance of having a poor coach, though, so let's have one of those instead.  


This calcio expert also has some beef with the Stadio Olimpico. Mr Agovino: WE ALL DO. But they are not about the number of toilets or concessions, of which there are many. Had he said that the area around it was in disrepair, that the public transport links were chaotic or that the security barriers blocked his view, he might have given the impression he'd been there as a fan, rather than as a tourist with an over-active bladder. Anyway, the stadium is owned and operated by the national olympic committee, not AS Roma. 


The biggest laugh comes close to the end of this article. I wouldn't force anyone to sit through reading it, so I'll sum up: an American thinks it's worth mentioning (in an admirable sense, much as one would do when talking about how "wonderfully primative" the tribes of the Amazon are) that an Italian who lives and works in Italy doesn't speak English. "Totti," says Agovino, "speaks no English, does not even try, preferring the local Roman dialect."


Considering how well-known and well-regarded the NYT is, it's amazing how such poor content could make it onto its pages. There's hope for us all yet. 

The ugly

where football meets character and belief ... but not spell-check

This article from The Hard Tackle is the most bizarre football piece I've seen in a while, and I regularly read the websites of England's tabloids. I think the writer is trying to say that Serie A is knackered, but I can't be sure. Whatever point he's trying to make seems solely based on the fact that Pavel Nedved is gone, and so is Samuel Eto'o, who must have been put off by Italy and who would never have left a Spanish team. Oh, wait ...

The Hard Tackle is an Indian website, and as someone who regularly struggles with a foreign tongue, I would hate to take a pop at someone who speaks and writes English as a second language. But I do not know why an English-language site would employ someone with so tentative a grasp of the lingo. Surely someone in there knows what it's supposed to sound like? This is littered with spelling mistakes and wacky grammar, like this bee-ootiful "sentence":

"The preservation of the best talents hence, has become one of the most conspicuous points in question for the League and has thus far not been handled with the required levels of proficiency."

Then there's this belter:

"The adversities in Italian football henceforth, are quite deep rooted than that meets the eye and a few good signings here and there shall not serve the broader purpose of administering the League in the smoothest possible manner."

Exactly.