Fitba' Italia

Published on Sunday 11 November 2007 00:02

THIS coming Saturday is a big day out for the Vezza family. They will put on their football strips and travel the short distance from their Glasgow home to Hampden to watch Scotland's crunch Euro 2008 qualifier against Italy. Together they will lap up the pre-match rituals, watching the fireworks and dancing along to The Proclaimers. But their show of solidarity will end the moment the whistle blows.

While mum Marie-Therese will be getting behind the efforts of the home side, her husband Tony and their children Vittorio, Alberto, Gianluca and Sofia will be cheering on the Azzurri, as the Italian national team is known. While she will be waving a saltire, they will draped in red, white and green. While she'll do her best to belt out 'Loch Lomond' at half-time, the rest of her family will be chanting 'Forze Italia'.

Businessman Tony Vezza was born in Glasgow and regularly goes to Parkhead and Hampden. He considers himself an enthusiastic Scotland supporter on most occasions. But when the national team squares up to Italy in their most important encounter in a generation, there is no doubt his loyalties will lie with i campioni del mondo.

"To be honest, this is my worst nightmare," says Vezza, chairman of Suio, a mineral water firm, owner of wholesalers Vezza's Italian Produce and erstwhile member of the Tartan Army. "Marie-Therese says it's a win-win situation - whatever happens one of my teams will qualify. But I say it's a lose-lose situation. Whatever happens one of my teams will be going out."

Vezza, whose family hails from the Lazio province, admits when push comes to shove, he cannot help but support Italy. "I spend so much time there and have supported the team all my life - I followed them through the 1990 World Cup, Euro 96, and I was even at last year's World Cup final. In fact I was there with my friend, who is a Scotland fan. It is strange to think we will both be at Hampden on Saturday, but at opposite sides of the stadium."

Vezza's sense of being torn between two cultures will be familiar to most of the country's 40,000-strong Scots-Italian population as the day of the big game approaches. This is despite the fact that Scots of Italian extraction have fitted seamlessly into their adopted communities since the first wave of immigrants arrived in 1890. From their early days as ice-cream sellers (their cry of "gelato, ecco un poco" saw them dubbed the hokeypokey men) they now hold a disproportionate number of influential positions in almost every professional sphere: from business to music (Sharleen Spiteri and Nicola Benedetti) to law (Lord Advocate Elish Angiolini) to acting (Peter Capaldi and Daniela Nardini).

With only one Italian parent (my father emigrated from Lucca in the 1960s but my mother is Scottish), I was not as steeped in the country's culture as many of my Italo-Scot friends. But when it came to football, supporting any team other than Italy would have been seen as heresy. Even my experience of club football - such as it was - was Italian and a little red and black Lucchese mascot hung in my bedroom.

A generation on, my children's Italian roots have been further diluted. They are interested chiefly in the chic aspects of their heritage. In other words, they love Ferraris, Lamborghinis and their Italian strips. And they use their duality to help stave off the sense of disappointment that comes with being a Scotland supporter. They can simply swap tops and keep on cheering.

Italo-Scots are likely to keep in close contact with Italian relatives, visit the country several times a year and many even have dual nationality. Domenico Crolla, head chef of Bella Napoli in Glasgow's south side, spends at least three days a month in Italy. "It's like having two sons playing on opposite sides of the same match," he says. "You don't want either of them to win. You know either way one of them is going to get hurt."

Arts impresario Richard Demarco is equally tortured. "I will watch the match, but it will cause turmoil in the very depths of my being," he says. "It's an awful experience which will test my identity. I care desperately about the state of Scottish football and of Italian football and I feel they both deserve to get through. It would be awful if Italy went out, but equally I don't want Italy to be seen as the team that robbed Scotland of its big chance."

Most Italo-Scots would, it seems, fail Norman Tebbit's infamous cricket test - when he asked which team England's Asian population would support when England played Pakistan or India at cricket. But does their partiality for a football team that has a realistic chance of bringing home a cup put a question mark over their Scottish citizenship?

Few countries can have spent as much time pondering the nature of identity as the Scots. With the diaspora taking hundreds of thousands to the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and our constant examination of our place within the UK, we have long mulled over the question of what makes us who we are. Is nationality an accident of birth? Or does it have more to do with a sense of belonging?

Perhaps the problem is the word Scottish is too narrow a term to define the complex mishmash of ethnicities the country now encompasses: we need phrases such as Asian-Scot, Italo-Scot and even Polish-Scot to come close to capturing some people's true cultural make-up.

Film producer Sergio Casci once said it wasn't until he was 30 that he realised he was neither a Scot with a funny name, nor a poor relation to the locals he met on holiday in Italy, but a 100% pure-bred Scots-Italian, a group with a history that spans three centuries.

Demarco, who has Irish as well as Italian heritage, has come up with another definition. "I think of myself as a Romano-Celt and as a European. I choose to live in Scotland, because from here I have easy access to Italy, France, Lithuania and Romania."

Where some second or third generation Scots find it difficult to reconcile their cultural identity, most Italo-Scots see their duality as an asset. "You've no idea how many doors it has opened for me," says Vezza. "People, especially Americans, love the idea that you are an Italian who speaks with a Scottish accent."

Domenico Crolla's cousin Gino Crolla, who owns Italian takeaway Anima in Edinburgh, says his background marked him out as different, "but only in a good way".

"I always felt Scottish as well as Italian. It was just nice to feel you belonged to two places," says Crolla, who is married to Italo-Scot Emanuela.

Secondary school teacher Marcello Luisi enjoyed the touch of glamour being half Italian lent his life. He was brought up by his Italian father and an aunt who came over from Italy to look after him when his Irish-Scots mother died. "To be honest, I loved the feeling of belonging to a country that does everything with such panache - its cooking, even its crime is stylish," he says. "But its football is absolutely fantastic - it's up there with Argentina and Brazil."

And that's fine, because the Italo-Scot's passion for Italian football doesn't seem to rankle with Tartan Army fans, who relish having such a glamorous opponent. Shops are already capitalising on the good-natured rivalry. Last week the kilt and Highland dresswear company Slanj was selling a top with a lion rampant in the colours of the Italian flag. At Anima, Gino Crolla will be selling a fish supper pizza - featured smoked haddock and pesto-infused potatoes - on the day of the big match, while an Italo-Scot pizza - half Scottish cheddar, whisky sauce and venison; half parma ham, peppers and salami - will be on offer at Bella Napoli.

Both Crollas plan to show the match at their restaurants and anticipate plenty of friendly abuse after kick-off. They will, of course, be shouting for Italy, but they know that, for most Italo-Scots, a victory will bring mixed feelings rather than the usual elation. Indeed, where Luisi normally likes to gloat when Italy wins, he says he would be prepared to forego a victory on Saturday if both teams could go through to the finals in Austria and Switzerland.

There is, I am reliably informed, one way out of this impasse, and, as usual, it involves the kind of back-of-the-envelope calculations which typify the national squad's fortunes abroad. If Scotland and Italy draw on Saturday, then Italy go on to beat the Faroe Islands and Ukraine beat France, both teams could indeed qualify. Then Scots of almost all extractions would be happy.

Forza Caledonia: Italians in Scotland

1890s: As Italy struggles to feed its poor, the first wave of Italian immigrants from Tuscany, Lazio, Molise and Ligure reaches Scotland. Many of them, some of them statuette-makers who came via London, become ice-cream sellers.

Early 1900s: The ice-cream sellers quickly expand their businesses, setting up cafs and fish and chip shops. They recruit workers from their home villages, swelling Scotland's Italian population to around 4,000 by the start of the First World War.

1930s/40s: A large number of Italians in Scotland heed Mussolini's call to join the Fascists. Within hours of Italy entering the Second World War on June 10, 1940, Winston Churchill gives the order to "collar the lot". Ironically, while many of the older generation are interned or deported, their Scots-born children are conscripted.

1950s/60s and beyond: After the war, Italian cafs continue to flourish and a new generation comes over to work for families such as the Nardinis in Largs.

Some of the children born to that generation of immigrants carry on in catering, while others forge successful careers in medicine, law and the arts.

Assuredly Azzurri or staunchly Scottish?

MARY CONTINI Writer and director of Valvona and Crolla There is a clear conflict of interest in our household. My husband Philip says "Italy!" without a moment's hesitation. I immediately react by choosing to support the home team. Really the joy for us is that either way our team will win.

LINDA FABIANI Culture ministerI'm not a huge football fan, but I do tend to watch Scotland matches and I will be supporting them on Saturday. With me, it's always got to be Scotland first and foremost, although it's nice to have a second team to fall back on if Scotland go out.

GIO BENEDETTI Entrepreneur and father of violinist Nicola It is a very difficult thing for me, and I will need to keep this hidden from other Italians because they might go off me, but I think I would have to say Scotland because they are the underdogs, but also because I have lived here for so long now, I am almost a Jimmy.

RICHARD DEMARCO Arts impresario I will watch the match, but it will cause turmoil in the very depths of my being. It's an awful experience which will test my identity. It would be awful if Italy went out, but equally I don't want Italy to be seen as the team that robbed Scotland of its big chance.