Football Italiano

The Milan Derby is 1-1 at half time. Good game it is too. Some tasty challenges going in but the ref is just letting the game flow, which is great to see. Anyone been watching it?

And that italian girl in the studio is always worth a mention. Laura Esposto

yep, watched first half, but then had to leave for work,bloody late turn.

good match, brilliant free kick for inters goal and the italian girl is fit,fit, fit.

2-1 to Inter it finished. Terrible goalkeeping by Dida for the winning goal. Inter are looking in good form though. To be fair, Milan gave them a bit too much space at times. We can't be doing that when we play them...

2-1 to Inter it finished. Terrible goalkeeping by Dida for the winning goal. Inter are looking in good form though. To be fair, Milan gave them a bit too much space at times. We can't be doing that when we play them...

Caught the latter stages of the second half! Was a poor effort from Dida!

If we close them down and stop them playing then we should be alright!

I read today one interesting article in my national newspaper "Lessons of Italian"

If to open italo-russian dictionary on letter C, the word Calcio is translated above all as a kick, only then as football. The verb Calciare means to kick one another, but not to play football.

For example, to say the name of favorite team with pride, Italians often use the article before the name of their clubs. Moreover The article shows the gender of the noun. So, by that fact Juventus ( La Juventus) and Lazio (La Lazio) have female gender.

Juventus are known as "Vecchia signora"(Old lady). To traslate Juventus into English we get "Youth".
But if we refer to the history of that club we understand why it's like that. Cyclists-grammar-school boys who founded Juve got older and they were jokingly called "Old sirs".

It's easy to see what happens with last name of Paolo Maldini if we change the letters in it. Maldini - Di Milan (from Milan).
The other player-symbol of Milan Gattuso has nickname Cane - a dog. But he has cat's last name: Gatto means a Cat on Italian.

In common, many Italian last names are easy to translate on the other foreign languages. For example:

Grosso - big
Chiesa - a church
Capello - a hair
Barone - barony
Pazienza - calm
Di Natale - of Christmas
Pasquale - of Easter
Galante - dandy
Falcone -  of falcon
Cassetti - cases
Foggia - model
AcquaFresca - fresh water
Tedesco - German
Buffone - jester
Sabato - saturday
Pepe- pepper
Piccolo - small

The Italian league is full of shits it still reigns with corruption as Inter proved in their game against Parma nothing but corruption.