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What Italian terms should every fan of Italian football know?

italian football terms

Italian football is one of the best in the world – any Italian would agree with this sentence. But what is more, their national team and sports leagues are also popular with people outside of sunny Italy. What should you know about football from this country?

One of the best in the world

Italian national football team is deemed to be one of the best in the world. Not only have they won the UEFA World Cup four times, but also stood on the second step of the podium two times and won the third place once. It’s one of the most titled teams in the world. Serie A, the highest Italian football league, is also well known around the world. Honestly, who hasn’t heard about Juventus FC, AC Milan or Inter Mediolan? Italian club teams have won 48 major European trophies, which makes them the second most successful nation in European football right after Spain. If you are a fan of Serie A or Azzurri (the Italian national team), you should definitely catch some words and phrases, that might come in handy. What are those?

What are they wearing?

If you’d like to get to know some of the important Italian phrases, you should start with the pieces of clothes the players are wearing on the field. After all – those are the basics! The hands of the goalkeeper must be kept safe. The ball is being kicked at him usually with great force, which means catching the ball with his bare hands would simply hold too high a risk of injury. That’s why he is wearing gloves: ‘i guanti da portiere’. The long socks, that every player wears, are called ‘i calzini’ and the socces shoe is ‘la scarpa da calcio‘. Now we know exactly, what the players are wearing.

Colorful cards (not) for everyone!

Each team is wearing costumes in club or national colors. The Italian national team is called ‘azzurri’ because of the blue hue of their outfits. But those are not the only colours that can be found on the field.

Players can receive two types of cards: yellow ones, which are a kind of warning to the player: “do something similar again and you leave the field” and the red ones. The latter are given for receiving a second yellow card or, in the event of a major offense (e.g. a foul in the penalty area), can also be given without a prior yellow card. If you’re not watching the match, but you can hear your Italian friends yelling and grumbling, it might mean, that one of their favourite players received ‘il cartellino giallo’ (the yellow card) or, even worse, ‘il cartellino rosso’ – the red one (though, in such case, we’re almost sure, that you could enrich your dictionary with Italian curses that are unknown even to parts of Italian society).

Who’s on the field?

Let’s move to meeting the players. While for many people who don’t know the ball quite well, the team is just a bunch of guys running around with a football, each of the players has its own unique role and therefore also a name.

English defender is ‘il difensore’ and ‘il portiere’ stands for the person responsible for stopping the ball from falling into the net. Behind the sideline, we have ‘l’allenatore’ – the coach and also, there is a very important person between the players: referee (l’arbitro).

Let the match begin!

Let’s move on to the words, that can be used during the match (which is called ‘la partita’, by the way). But first, place your scommesse sportive – a bet for the team you think will win! This is a common practice among Italians, as they love to have some fun and feel the thrill of emotions.

The players are using the football: ‘il pallone’. When playing hard, they can commit ‘il fallo’ – a foul. On the other hand, they can score ‘il gol’ (a goal) – hopefully for their own team, no the opposite one. If one player wants to move the football to another, he ‘il passaggio diretto’ – passes it. The pass might be a short one and then it’s called ‘il passaggio corto’. The person, who gets the ball, ‘l’arresto (della palla)’ – receives it.

We hope, that the words given in this article will help you feel the atmosphere on Italian matches even better. If you have a chance to participate in Series A meeting, don’t hesitate: those are emotions, that shouldn’t be skipped! Maybe even the phrases you caught today will come in handy?