Aurelio Porfiri
I imagine that millions of people have remained glued to the television to follow the victory of the Italian national team at the European football championships that ended a few days ago. A painful victory that crowned an equally suffered European championship for the Italian team. Since football is our national sport in Italy, this victory will certainly have brought a little relief to many people who have experienced severe oppression due to Covid 19 and the pandemic we are still experiencing.
To do a little cultural reading, we cannot forget that if it is true that modern football was born in England in the nineteenth century, its foundations were laid in the Renaissance precisely in our Italy, with Florentine football.
It has always been an element of curiosity for me to observe how the nations that show more imagination and elegance in the game of football, such as our Italy, Brazil, Argentina, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, have one thing in common: they are countries with an ancient Catholic tradition. Of course, even some countries with a Protestant tradition such as Germany and England have achieved successes in certain periods (more Germany than England) but usually at the national level the ones I listed above have a certain dominance. At the club level it is different, but it must not be forgotten that top-level European football teams do not show a specific national character, being filled with foreign players. In another Protestant country like the United States, European football has never really made it through.
I imagine that the traditional love for beauty and art can be inscribed in this “Catholic” dominance, which translates into sport in the search for a certain elegance in the game and in the love for the imagination of the players rather than for attention to the running-in of the whole. Sometimes the latter pays, as happened with the German panzers, but in the long run our Catholic genes give us an undeniable advantage even in unexpected fields, an advantage that does not fail to bear its fruits of honors and victories.
Sometimes people don’t think too much about all things that are connected with our being Catholics, with the rich culture that benefits us in many fields. Nowadays Catholic culture is in disarray but maybe there will come a time when it will be revived and everyone will notice how good it is for humanity.
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