Italy’s victory at Euro 2020 reflects a broader comeback

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ROME – The eruption of sheer joy – car honking, horn blowing, exploding fireworks and hugging – across Italy on Sunday after the men’s national soccer team beat England to win Euro 2020, was an extraordinary turnaround, not only for a recently beleaguered team, But also for a recently besieged country.

But if the volatile, indefatigable and probably undefeated Italian national team lifts the country’s spirits after multiple lockdowns and untold suffering caused by a brutal pandemic, it is only the latest sign of a national resurgence.

Also on Sunday, Matteo Berrettini became the first Italian to play in the men’s singles tournament at Wimbledon. Shortly before his court appearance, Pope Francis showed his face for the first time since undergoing major colon surgery. In May, the Romanian rock band Maneskin won the Eurovision Song Contest. And Xabi Lam, a 21-year-old from an area near Turin, has one of the most followed accounts in the world on TikTok.

Italy’s fortunes also look to real, not just symbolic ways.

In February, a political crisis led the country to dump its faltering prime minister and let in Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank chief whose international stature helped lift Italy from a minor player on the European stage to a driving force. More than half of the country received a dose of vaccination; Restaurants, bars, parks and beaches have reopened. Billions of euros are headed the country’s way as part of a massive European coronavirus rescue plan. He believed that unimaginable sweeping reforms, including cutting back a paralyzed bureaucracy, now seemed plausible.

These fundamental changes may have put Italy in a stronger position compared to its European neighbours, where political uncertainty and tension prevail, but nothing holds the country together, or touches a lively collective nerve, like a great national football victory.

Sunday night’s inarticulate screams, her cheers for Leonardo Bonucci’s second-half equalizer and Gianluigi Donnarumma’s two saves on penalties, her shouts from Roman balconies, Bergamo squares and Sicilian beaches returned to expressions of comfort and life.

Even before the match, the country was accelerating. The Wimbledon final, in which Mr Berrettini managed to snatch a group from Novak Djokovic, was a preparation for the main event. The waiters and waitresses, their faces painted in Italian, served copious amounts of beer to the crowd waving Italian flags.

The open-air cinema in Rome’s Trastevere section boycotted its regularly scheduled programs (“A Perfect Day” by Ferzan Ozpetek) for the game, and the turnout was much greater, with thousands crowding the square. Fans flocked to the large plazas, nuns stood in front of televisions, and families hoisted flags and air horns.

“I was born the day Italy won the World Cup,” Carlo Alberto Petrangelli, 52, said of Esther Aquilani, 15, who wore a flag draped over her shoulders. So did her cousin Lorenzo Ciorlio, 12, who refused to fly the flag until the finals for fear of bringing bad luck.

“If we had lost,” he said gently.

But they haven’t lost it, and if anyone expects to fall asleep in the coming days, they can basically forget about it.

If past celebrations, most recently the team’s World Cup victory in 2006, matched Sunday night’s festivities by decibel level, they didn’t have the emotional undercurrent and pent-up frustration.

“The national team is a symbol of a country that has always known in difficult moments how to rise again,” said coach Roberto Mancini, before the tournament started and while Italy was still closed.

That the Italian football team has shown the country that they can pick themselves up, dust themselves off and outperform the rest of Europe is fantastic.

In late 2017, Italy failed for the first time in 60 years to qualify for the World Cup they had won four times. “National Shame” and “Apocalypse” are making headlines in a country where the game is too central to its national identity and where humiliation has led to an existential crisis. Months later, an anti-European coalition made up of Matteo Salvini’s nationalist party and the populist and anti-establishment Five Star Movement chose Giuseppe Conte, a little-known law professor, to lead the country.

Years of political drama, often inept and mind-boggling, followed by the rapprochement of Donald Trump and the threat of the European Union. The coalitions shifted, but Mr Conte stayed, and then, in February 2020, the West’s first major outbreak of coronavirus exploded in northern Italy, turning parts of the country into a killing ground, crippling the economy and forcing large swathes of daily life – including soccer fields. Foot – to close.

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July 7, 2021, 7:17 PM ET

Under Mr. Draghi, about 58 percent of Italians have received at least one dose of the vaccine, and the country’s nationalists and anti-establishment forces have joined his government.

Before the team could return with the title, Mr. Draghi sought to bring the championship match to Rome.

Last month, he sought to move the final from Wembley Stadium in London due to the spread of the Delta version there. In an inaccurate excavation of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who backed Brexit, Mr Draghi suggested moving the final to “a country where new coronavirus infections are not increasing”.

But no one really expected Italy and its young and inexperienced team to play in the final at Wembley, where, during his playing days, Mancini lost the 1992 European Cup final with Sampdoria against Barcelona.

However, the team’s captain, veteran defender Giorgio Chiellini, noted that the team had a “harmony” that was “kind of magic”. And as the team continued to win, more and more Italians began to believe.

After harsh penalty kicks and a powerful shock by Mr. Donnarumma made Italy the European champions, England fans could not believe it.

The men’s team hadn’t won a major tournament or even reached a major final in 55 years, but this one had promise, youth, diversity and a social conscience and seemed to reflect the complex, multicultural England that had sometimes lost in tribal debates over Brexit. The team united a country that has spent most of the past four and a half years arguing with itself about its separation from the European Union, and most of the past 15 months under coronavirus lockdowns.

The 95-year-old Queen Elizabeth II, the team manager, stated in a letter that she had been on hand for 55 years to present the World Cup to his predecessor. More than 70 per cent of the UK population was born after that tournament. And many will be born before they surprise the losing streak.

Tears swept away the English flag that Rosie Mason, 25, had painted on her face.

“I’m devastated, we didn’t bring her home,” she said in London.

Veterans with dashed English hopes tried to console younger supporters. “Don’t be sad,” James McDonnell, 50, told a group of English teenagers. “This is the usual English: hope, then lose in penalty kicks on a rainy day.”

The fans in Rome needed no consolation. They tore their shirts and exposed the Italian flags on their chests. It’s us. They shouted in circles and blue fire sticks lighted their faces. “European champions are us.”

A river of fans roams the streets of Rome, with many climbing traffic lights, trash cans, and each other’s shoulders. The billowing cars blocked the streets like a festive traffic jam. Fireworks lit up a city that never sleeps.

“It’s the most beautiful thing in my life,” said Daniele Pace, 20, wearing the blue Italian national jersey and the flag around his hips. “It’s the best thing that can happen to us after COVID.” He said the victory over England was “better. They are not even part of the European Union”.

The government was a touch more diplomatic.

Mr Draghi’s press office, who is usually sober, sent out a statement in Italian green, white and red, in which he said the prime minister would receive the team tomorrow in his office “to thank them on behalf of the entire government”.

As all Italy celebrated, the team shone on the field, where they were joined by Mr. Berrettini, who reached the Wimbledon final.

Mr Bonucci called the victory “a dream come true”. He said England thought the cup would go to their homeland, but instead it would go to Rome. “I’m sorry for them,” he told Italian television after the match. “But again, Italy is giving a lesson.”

Mark Landler and Elaine Peltier contributed reporting from London, and Emma Popola from Rome.

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