One of my goals for living in Italy was to make it to at least one football game. This goal isn’t particularly difficult as Rome has two teams – Roma and Lazio – and there are loads of lower level games happening all over the place. All that said, after almost two years, we hadn’t made any move to actually make it happen.
Thankfully I work with some much more organized people and a Sunday night boys night was planned to watch Roma take on Fiorentia.
The main sport I follow is basketball as a long time committed fan of the Toronto Raptors. It’s news to absolutely no one that Europeans, and Italians in particular, take their football more seriously than most people can ever even conceive of. The atmosphere in the massive Olimpico Stadium was absolutely electric before kickoff.
To say I’ve never experienced such a thing is an understatement. The commitment, the passion, the vibes, absolutely legendary. The skill of the players on the field was astonishing too. Their speed, explosiveness, precision and creativity with the ball reflected the world class quality of the Serie A immediately.
The game passed by quite a bit faster than a football match does on tv. Always actions, always movement, no stoppages per half. The boys chuckled, bantered, threw back a few brewskis and peppered the one guy who actually followed Italian football with plenty of questions.
The squad come out with a 2-0 win on two beautiful strikes by their star player Paolo Dybala. We wound our way out along with the delighted crowd and realized that adult life almost never includes seeing 11pm on a Sunday night, but for this experience, it was worth it.
I’m hoping to get to see at least one more game before we leave Italy and maybe see if Aleksander wants to taking his kicking skills into the big leagues!
Dad In The World 