Guest Article: The Italian's Job

We're back with another entry into the hallowed Guest Article catalogue!  Today we get a great inside look at the key differences between two European football leagues, namely the Irish American Football League and its Italian counterpart.  As well as that we'll delve into the challenges facing both developing leagues.

Filippo Bertoli, the Lou Ferrigno stunt double, has spent time with both the Dublin Rebels and the Mustangs Trieste as a defensive tackle.  As a result Filippo is excellently positioned to give some real insight into the comparable standards and the problems each league faces; both the shared and the unique challenges.

So let's not waste any more time and let's get to it!

Filippo Bertoli, DL (#65), Mustangs Trieste

The Italian's Job

by Filippo Bertoli

When I was asked to write a piece about the differences in playing American football in Italy and Ireland I thought ‘’Hey why not?’’; now, with a blank page in front of me and so many ideas, it all seems a little bit more difficult.  However, one of the first thing you learn when playing American Football is to never give up on a challenge on the first difficulties so let's begin...

Despite the differences in the two leagues, I did not find a difference in level between the best Irish teams and the best Italian teams (the ones in the A1 series); now, with that said let's move on to what struck me as the differences that I did notice here.

The main differences between Italy and Ireland, in terms of American football, are mainly due to demographic and dimensions issues; to be clearer Ireland is smaller and less populated than Italy and this bring the clubs and the leagues to have to change the rules and adapt them.  I’ll try to explain myself with two examples: the officiating system and the away games.

The smaller population of Ireland compared with Italy, and the lesser number of players of the sport in Ireland (although, as I said before, this did not invalidate the quality of the players) has caused the IAFL to require players from each team to participate as referees throughout the season.  Since this (that one referee would officiate a game of their own championship) is forbidden in Italy you can imagine my surprise when, at my first game with the Rebels, one of my teammates just stated that "That referee is from our cross town rival!".  At first I thought I hadn't understood correctly (I was having some problems adjusting to the Irish accent), but I realised the referee really was from a rival team that we would have to face in two weeks.

Well you would think that something like that will lead the players of one team to complain if there was some bad call, leading to speculation that the officials were trying to influence the game in some way; a bitter spirit that could easily be turned into less than sportsmanlike behaviour during the following games.  Luckily though none of this happens in the Irish league; all of the officials try really hard to do their job to the best of their ability and nobody in the competing teams complain about that.  Well of course players complain if there was a bad call, but nobody really suspects it’s a call made with any true malice.

The other example I wanted to speak about are the away games which in Italy are really a fundamental challenge to both the economic balance of the team and the economy of the championship.

During the Italian championship teams travel to two or three long away games and naturally the first questions that raises to any Italian team when the calendar is published are usually: "Where do we have to go?  When?  Which team are we going to face?"  The normal situation for an away trip include things like: waking up at 3am, taking a bus (or a train, or a minivan, if one of these options proves cheaper than the bus), sit there for 11 hours, or more with only two breaks along the road, arriving to the opponent’s field one hour before the match (it does not matter if you think you’ll be there before, something will always go wrong), change and try to warm up and loose yourself as much as you can, play, get a quick shower and go straight back, because the most of the players have to work the day after which can mean arriving home at 4 am and to go to work at 7am!

You can easily understand how in this kind of situation an away game becomes really important, not only in the financial sense, but also in the sense of having to play against a strong team, no matter how you want it, eleven hours in transit will take its toll on the performance of any mortal!  Of course, this does not apply to Ireland, since the country is obviously smaller, and I think this is a real saving both for the management of the team and for the players causing the championship to not be dependent on away games.

The last point I would like to consider is the so called ‘’foreign player issue’’ about which in Italy people are arguing a daily basis.  What is this foreign player issue about?  Well the rule as it stands now is that only three non-Italian players can play for a team in the top league.  The reasons for this being a team could decide to buy players from other championships to have something like an all star team and so not support the growth of Italian players and foreign player will take the game time of Italian players so further blocking the develop of Italian American football players.

I'll discuss these points starting from the acquisition of an all-foreign team, which is impossible for any Italian team currently since no team can afford to do that.  I mean, we are talking about teams that have problems to arrive at the end of a season (due to trips, field and officials costs) and they should buy a complete team?  I don’t really think this is a possibility in the future and so shouldn't be an issue.

Secondly, when I came here in Ireland I learned a lot from everyone of my teammates, both the Irish guys and the foreign ones. Well, since in Ireland this rule does not apply I can tell you that playing with foreign people does not mean having places taken off the local players, it just mean that the local player can come into contact with very good players from every part of the world and everyone of them can teach them new things and new aspect of this sport so that they can improve and be better players.  It also obviously means having more competition to play and a strong drive to come and train at every session, while, in a limited team, you are maybe able to skip some trainings just because you are so good that you will play (that is happening in every team, but I have heard this kind of reason more than once in Italy unfortunately).  Also, in an era in which travelling and working around Europe is becoming a constant it’s just terrible to not let one man play his favourite sport just for the fear that this could be exploited.

So before I sign off let me quickly thank the two teams that have brought me to this point in my playing career: the Mustangs Trieste for taking me when I didn't know anything about American football and turned me into a proper player, and the Dublin Rebels who are still pushing to make me a better player even if the road seems very long.

Thanks for reading!