Wonderful comment from Boris Johnson in the newspaper today, talking about the "beautiful game" (what sh1t) and how we in England are much better suited to playing rugby than football.
Of course, because Boris wrote it, it gets lambasted, and the fools that play football cannot suffer a mite of criticism, but I loved it. In a nutshell, football is for pansies, rugby is for real men and vents frustrations. Classic Boris.
On the other hand, it did get me thinking about Italian life, sporting life and all it throws up. The Italians are mad keen on football, at the cost of almost all else, except maybe for a little basketball. They are notorious talkers, promoters, and I can see why they love the beautiful game - why do anything when you can just talk about it instead? Maybe I am a little strange, I am uncompromising, forthright and direct, to the cost of myself and friends, and I know this. However, I think it is an English trait to get to the point quickly, and now I see how it contrasts with the Italian approach, I will give an example. English estate agent, once they get their hands on you, they never let go, let a dog with a freshly hewn hunk of meat they get their teeth in and fight to the death. Italian estate agents on the other hand are completely different. They will not take you to see a house on a first visit, but rather will take some time to chat with and establish a relationship prior to even thinking of showing you some of the properties that they might have. They are relationship driven and this counts much above the point of actually making some money. Possibly a freak incident, but a colleague recently bought a house. In the operation of the sale, he managed to annoy the owner of the 2nd semi-detached house, and has now purchased a €450k house, which he will never move into, due to the death threats he has received. This is clearly an extreme case, most of the house acquisitions I know of are just protracted and long, but they have some good parts.
My conclusion is thus: you can hype and overhype the differences between Italian and English living. Some bits are good, some bits are bad - in the end it's just different. Certainly the grass is always greener, but which shade of green is really better to you?
PMN: I haven't come to my conclusion yet...
PPS: Barcelona were much better than Man U
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