Unlucky Luciano

With a major Italian football scandal ushering in the World Cup in Germany, which begins in just over a week’s time, it is often difficult to remember there is more to the sport than money; there is also that old and somewhat ruffled phantom, the beauty of the game. Aficionados have long been uncomfortable with commerce barging into the world of football. The aesthetics of the game have rarely been tolerant of the baser motives behind the sport. Many a team, from Barcelona to Inter Milan to Manchester United, to name only a few, has at one time or another been forced to nourish supporters’ refusal to see their teams depicted merely as business enterprises. Barcelona refuses advertisement on its shirts; Inter Milan’s tifosi stick to a myth that the team is politically on the left, unlike the supposed right-wing image of cross-town rival AC Milan. And United backers took