Soccer is a sport played on a pitch, with a referee, twenty players, and two goalposts. Italians have managed to take this game and make it their own by changing it into almost an art form. Soccer has become something of an obssession in Italy and has become so entwined with the lives of Italians that you can only wonder what they would do without it. Soccer was brought to Italy by an Italian who worked for a British textile company. Edoardo Basio, born in Turin, Basio first saw soccer in England where soccer was already a professional sport. Basio brought soccer to Italy and formed the first soccer club in Turin in the late 1880’s. The club was officially formed in 1891,  and was called the International Football Club, which would someday be known as “Inter”. Because soccer was still in its infancy, there were no football federations, no written rules, no referees, and no pitches. Although the International club was at first the one and only club around there was soon the Genoa Cricket and Football Club. Genoa was a club founded by the British and allowed only British members. In 1897, the first match between these two clubs was arranged and a year later the first soccer championship was played. By now there were four teams, all were from Turin. The final match was between Genoa and International with Genoa winning.

The early game of soccer in Italy is nothing what it is today. There was basically no training, stadiums, tactics, players were amateurs, and uniforms consisted of long shorts or trousers, long sleeves shirts with buttons, and caps were commonplace. Soccer was literally played by anyone who understood the basic fundamentals of the game. Doctors, artists, business, dockers, and students are all examples of people that played soccer, they were amateurs. These amateurs are the people who kept soccer alive in its early stages in Italy and the early stages of soccer in Italy were not pretty. Pitches were just fields that happened to be found and were more mud than grass most of the time. Crowds that would gather to watch were separated from the field by nothing more than a rope, and sometimes, not even that. Skill and tactics were unheard of and play was usually violent and slow. As soccer began to catch on in Italy, Italians began to claim that it had been theirs all along. Italy claimed that football originated in Italy as Federazione Italiana and had been played during the Renaissance, other than the fact that the two games had a pitch and a ball, it hasn’t been proven they were the same thing. The claim was just an attempt to be able to call soccer Italian and to ensure this, Italy changed the name from Federazione Italiana to calcio.

As the game of soccer grew in popularity, the way it was played managed to progress too. There were more and more clubs, rules were written, and referees. Amateurism was written into the statues and rules of clubs, but didn’t last very long. The Viareggio Charter was a complete set of new rules that changed the face of soccer in Italy. Professionalism was legalized, foreign players were banned (Italian origin was a loophole), and the referees’ association was abolished. Professionalism took a long time to become anything but negative. It was a long, hard battle, but the demands of fans and the deep pockets of the larger clubs won out. Players weren’t the only ones being bribed or bought either, referees were just as guilty. Referees were soon regarded as corrupt and so a lot of violence was and still is directed at referees. If a game is going badly, the players aren’t at fault, the referee is. Rich clubs, which had more money, were then privileged with “better” referees. There have been  few referees in the history of Italian soccer that have been known for refereeing by the rules and only the rules and even fewer are known for it. The most famous of referees was oddly enough, one of the most fair and unbiased. His name was Pierluigi Collina and he did things that no other referees had ever done, he apologized for bad calls, explained decisions to managers, and didn’t let the bigger, more powerful clubs intimidate him. “When Collina was in charge the rules were applied in an even-handed way.” (Foot )  

Soccer in Italy dominates the people and has almost an occult-like gathering. Unfortunately this was and is a huge draw for politicians to try and become involved.  Money is a moving force in Italian soccer and by the 1920’s soccer had become popular enough for politics to use the sport in their campaigns. Mussolini was one of the first and managed to make soccer in Italy “Fascist” and even took the team to the 1938 World Cup, which they won. The latest cross-over is Silvio Burlusconi who owns and is president of the soccer club, Milan. Soccer is involved in every aspect of Italians lives, which makes it easy to understand why there are so many scandals and problems. In Italy soccer is more than just a sport. Even still, Italians are passionate and loyal to their team and the fact that almost every city or town has a team of its own speaks volumes.