A short question with a long answer, much of it historical. (In other words, you've come to the right shop.) To begin with, of course you realize that dirty talk loses its potency over time. In 1919, "Me ne frego" (literally, I rub myself off at it; or more to sense, I don't give a wank about it) was just about the most savagely vulgar way to say one couldn't care less in Italian. That was the year of the disastrous peace negotiations, in which Italy was widely perceived to have been rooked and cheated out of the results of victory, and this song expressed the fury of the war veterans who were just then flooding into Mussolini's new Fascist Party with the express purpose of trashing seven bells out of internal and external enemies. Me ne frego, non so se ben mi spiego - "I don't give a flying fuck, I hope that's clear enough". The song was especially aimed at England, perceived as the most treacherous and two-sided of the allies, and a bete noire of all genuine Fascists from then to now.
The connection with football came about with two contemporary phenomena: the growth of Fascist tyranny and of the popularity of what was soon to become the national game. Three Italian cities have two major teams each - Turin (Juventus and Torino), Milan (Inter and Milan) and Rome (Lazio and Roma) - and it so happened that one of each had some red in its colours - Torino's Grenadier red (Granata), Milan's red-and-black stripes, and Roma's heraldic red and yellow, derived from the imperial purple and gold of the city's arms. Under Fascism, these teams became favourites with anyone who wanted to legitimately wave a red(dish) flat in public and make a lot of noise, whereas their opponents - Lazio, Juventus, Inter - became identified with government support. The same happened with other teams that happened to have red or black in their colours, but the city split between two sides made the subterranean politics more evident and significant in the case of these three. In fact, whoever told you that Juventus are especially identified with the Me Ne Frego crowd was way out of date. The continuous success of Juventus and Inter have diluted their political significance to the point of nonexistence, while on the other side, so to speak, the fact that Milan became Mr.Berlusconi's political tool absolutely reversed its significance. (And incidentally sent out, in disgust, the greatest Milan player of all time - Gianni Rivera, now a professional politician and an enemy of Berlusconi's. But Rivera is a Catholic and a conservative, and his complaint with Berlusconi is that he caricatured and prostituted real conservatism.) One team still keeps, whole and untouched, the political characteristics of Mussolini's time, and that team is Lazio in Rome:
Note the Irish flag (hardcore Fascists hate Britain) and the closing chant: "DUCE! DUCE!"
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To begin with, of course you realize that dirty talk loses its potency over time. In 1919, "Me ne frego" (literally, I rub myself off at it; or more to sense, I don't give a wank about it) was just about the most savagely vulgar way to say one couldn't care less in Italian. That was the year of the disastrous peace negotiations, in which Italy was widely perceived to have been rooked and cheated out of the results of victory, and this song expressed the fury of the war veterans who were just then flooding into Mussolini's new Fascist Party with the express purpose of trashing seven bells out of internal and external enemies. Me ne frego, non so se ben mi spiego - "I don't give a flying fuck, I hope that's clear enough". The song was especially aimed at England, perceived as the most treacherous and two-sided of the allies, and a bete noire of all genuine Fascists from then to now.
The connection with football came about with two contemporary phenomena: the growth of Fascist tyranny and of the popularity of what was soon to become the national game. Three Italian cities have two major teams each - Turin (Juventus and Torino), Milan (Inter and Milan) and Rome (Lazio and Roma) - and it so happened that one of each had some red in its colours - Torino's Grenadier red (Granata), Milan's red-and-black stripes, and Roma's heraldic red and yellow, derived from the imperial purple and gold of the city's arms. Under Fascism, these teams became favourites with anyone who wanted to legitimately wave a red(dish) flat in public and make a lot of noise, whereas their opponents - Lazio, Juventus, Inter - became identified with government support. The same happened with other teams that happened to have red or black in their colours, but the city split between two sides made the subterranean politics more evident and significant in the case of these three. In fact, whoever told you that Juventus are especially identified with the Me Ne Frego crowd was way out of date. The continuous success of Juventus and Inter have diluted their political significance to the point of nonexistence, while on the other side, so to speak, the fact that Milan became Mr.Berlusconi's political tool absolutely reversed its significance. (And incidentally sent out, in disgust, the greatest Milan player of all time - Gianni Rivera, now a professional politician and an enemy of Berlusconi's. But Rivera is a Catholic and a conservative, and his complaint with Berlusconi is that he caricatured and prostituted real conservatism.) One team still keeps, whole and untouched, the political characteristics of Mussolini's time, and that team is Lazio in Rome:
Note the Irish flag (hardcore Fascists hate Britain) and the closing chant: "DUCE! DUCE!"
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