Vatican slams Italian soccer
Apr 14, 2005
Sundays mean Church and soccer in Italy. With Vatican Radio now featuring cardinals as soccer commentators on a weekly show, the combination also holds true Mondays.
(AP/slam.canoe.ca, October 18, 2004) VATICAN CITY - Just three weeks old, the program's learned "opinionisti" are making headlines with their sage - and sometimes controversial - advice for coaches and club managers.
The first guest was Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini, who condemned the way that players are selected for the Italian national team.
"There are pressures and recommendations," Angelini said. "The fact that playing soccer has now become an economic reality creates a consideration where being or not being on the national team can increase or decrease the commercial worth of an athlete, which is very sad."
Italy coach Marcello Lippi did not take well to Angelini's comment.
"I understand that Italy is a Catholic country, but now we've got cardinals talking out?" he said. "I'm having a hard time understanding this."
Lippi may have to get used to it.
The weekly show, called Not Only Sports, airs each Monday on 105 Live, an FM station broadcast in the Rome area that was started four years ago to give the Vatican a new, younger voice.
After the first edition, the program was picked up by RAI state radio and is now being rebroadcast nationally.
"It's a man of God talking sports, an earthly pastime, talking the people's language," said Sean-Patrick Lovett, the director of 105 Live. "Sports is something that the people are interested in.
"The church is not just about sex scandals and papal decrees."
The show's host and producer, Luca Collodi, hopes to feature a different cardinal each week.
Joining Angelini this Monday was Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the archbishop of Genoa, known in sports circles for offering up occasional radio play-by-play of his favourite team - Juventus.
Angelini lamented the presence of too many foreign players in Italy's biggest clubs.
"It's true we're in a world of globalization, but we don't need to go and draw from foreign teams," Bertone said. "We need to help our young players. Great champions have been born on our fields."
Collodi said future guests could include Portuguese Cardinal Jose Saraiva Martins, a big Lazio fan, and Vatican-based Nigerian Cardinal Francis Arinze, known around town as a tennis lover.
"Last year we had legendary broadcaster Nando Martellini," Collodi said, referring to the RAI commentator who broadcast Italy's 1982 World Cup victory. "Unfortunately he died and we had to come up with something new for this season."
Despite the fact that at 88-year-old Angelini's slurred speech was difficult to decipher, Collodi was pleased that Angelini committed to set the tone as the first cardinal commentator.
"He's very competent on sports. Every morning the first newspaper he reads after mass is Corriere dello Sport," Collodi said, referring to the Rome sports daily.
"It's not just by chance that the show is called Not Only Sports,' Collodi said. "Sports is very popular within the church. Go inside any church parish and you'll always find a gym, a basketball court, people practising sports."
Lovett rejected the suggestion that the show could be a case of a moral authority weighing in on a sport that often contains amoral activities.
"I don't think that's the case at all," he said. "These are just sports loving prelates. (Angelini) speaks more as a sports lover than as a man of God.
"The outside world doesn't expect a man of the cloth, especially one wearing a red beret with a gold chain around his neck, to expound on the soccer fiefdom. It's the heavenly realm meets the earthly realm."
The show has yet to touch upon one of the stickier sports issues within the Vatican and a city sharply split between its two soccer teams, AS Roma and Lazio. Which team does the pope cheer for?
"Angelini is a Roma fan. As for the pope, that's still very difficult to determine," Collodi said, lowering his voice and adding: "Rumours say he had a preference for Lazio."
Vatican slams Italian soccer