Italians do love Football (for Americans, it is what you call "Soccer"). Italian kids play football through their whole childhood. Most of Italians have a favourite football team. In Italy we have 3 national newspapers dedicated to Sports (that means dedicated to football in 90% of their pages). When the National Italian Team has a match, politics stops its work, scheduled meetings are postponed, the roads have no traffic.
So you can understand what it means for italian people having their National Team out of the Final World Championship 2018 (for the second time in the history of Football Championship, I add).
Can you? I don't know. Probably no, you can't fully understand it. ^^
Italians (ok, most of us) follow the Football matches throughout their life. To explain better this hard concept, here is an image showing what "being sporty" means for Italians:
And, to explain even better the relationship between Italians and Football, here is an image showing how Italians see the "Love for the Homeland":
Italians even voted for angry, demagogic parties in the last National Elections, after knowing their team was out of the World Championship.
So, maybe you can understand now the feeling of the Italian People in these days, while the World Football Championship is happening in Russia. Do you want to see that feeling? Here it is:
:D
(Yes, I am one of those atypical Italians not interested in Football. You got me ;) )
