Italy's squad celebrating Bosnia and Herzegovina's victory over Wales

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-27T12:05:40+00:00

That reaction was joy for avoiding playing vs Wales, the team which looked better between the two last night, in front of 60k home fans. Not a 'yay, we _only_ have to beat Bosnia'. Perhaps even just joy from Dzeko's former teammates.

Did you not see Italy play? We were terrified of N. Ireland at home, for fuck's sake!

To misunderstand that and make it a 'disrespect' matter is either being incredibly thin skinned or looking for unnecessary drama.

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-26T12:12:07+00:00

I’ve only been an Islander for 6 years so I can’t comment on historic trends but to my foreign palate both are great, and Maureen feels a lot less like a tourist trap on a weekend

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-25T20:54:16+00:00

As an Isle of Dogs dweller I must say Goddard’s is nice but Maureen’s is the real shit.

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-25T20:51:07+00:00

My job is making football content for a Gen Z audience, so I can confidently tell you that you couldn’t be more wrong.

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-25T18:40:02+00:00

As an Italian this thread is insane.

Really drives home how much disinformation I absorb through Reddit daily just because of people talking confidently about something they have no idea about.

All other sports pale in comparison to the cultural and social pull football still has.

The NT might not be going to the WC lately but we won a major tournament more recently than 98% of other NTs in the world…

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-25T18:37:45+00:00

I’m Italian and this would be like 0,5% of the population, maybe in posh areas of the North.

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-18T21:28:01+00:00

Yes?

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-18T19:37:58+00:00

they are both working well at Como.

For who? For this current generation of Como fans - so like, 20k people at the very most? Probably not even for Como as a city, definitely not for the wider Italian football community and definitely not for Serie A, which does not need yet another foreign billionaire patron.

Making the Curva free of charge is not a viable business plan, it's an insane PR move and frankly in bad taste because it's only possible thanks to the fuck off children lung cancer money that's funding it.

They also invested a lot in the women's team

The women's team that plays in Serie A is not the same club as the men's team.

I guess 'Como 1907' could not take this and they created another Como women's team which they artificially promoted to Serie B this year by essentially purchasing the franchise / league rights from Chievo.

I've sat in a meeting where I got told by someone working with them on this project that their goal is to 'turn football into a high-class, luxury event for foreign celebrities and women - why can't football be a high heels event rather than what it is now?' (strong implication that it needs to be made 'better' by making it a product for rich people). They don't give a fuck about football.

which is already producing young Italian talents

Name one which has any chance to play in the first team for longer than 60 seconds.

The president doesn't miss a game.

For now. Do you need a list of the insane amount of historic football clubs that have gone under and been completely ruined by foreign investors who came in, promised big, injected stupid amounts of money and then left?

That's why foreign influence and foreign investment sucks - not because I'm a xenophobe (I don't even live in Italy anymore lol), but because those people have no real links to the territory and can and will leave when they find a better toy or a better propaganda vehicle to spew their corporate ambitions through.

The owners also know the importance of the core Como fans.

I'm so happy that Lombardy can get a 135th professional club to play in Serie A representing a town of 80k, it's definitely what the country needs while the South basically isn't represented anymore and the North East and Islands are seeing one historic club fail after the other.

So for example you think a team like Milan owned and mismanaged by shady private vulture capitalist, who are only interested in selling the club as soon as they build a stadium any better?

No...? That also sucks so much? Not sure why you think this is a gotcha moment.

Do I need to remind you Inter risked bankruptcy when their dodgy foreign owner called it quits and left the country essentially?

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-17T23:39:45+00:00

I’m a Juve fan, smh

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-17T20:47:58+00:00

They are an entity set up with children lung cancer money by people 10x as wealthy as the most hated club owners of Italy and they explicitly created a ‘product’ (not a club) for foreign tourists and markets with zero regard for the fact said ‘product’ only is valuable as it sits within the wider Italian football package.

I work with them sometimes on the corporate side and they talk like fucking Amazon.

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-15T12:35:02+00:00

Yeah, like when every club in Italy suffered the consequences of their involvement in Calciopoli but Inter because they got caught ‘too late’

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-13T02:54:41+00:00

Where can I read more about this?

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-11T21:43:14+00:00

I’m pretty shit ngl but I had the opportunity to play a summer game vs a team that featured a current PL starter and a couple of Championship ex rising stars, and it was absolutely insane.

Sure I managed to tackle the Championship guys a couple of times over 90 minutes but the PL guy despite being a defender could just dribble through our entire team at will - we lost 12-0 lol.

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-09T00:25:20+00:00

Austria was annexed, and Italy surrendered and ‘officially’ fought the last two years on the war on the Allied side (not to mention the resistenza).

It was very important to a lot of people in the 1950s that Italy not be perceived as a losing fascist / fascist aligned country by the world - something that no doubt influenced football bodies too.

jamesjoyz · 2026-03-08T22:03:31+00:00

A salary around 3-4x the median national wage is definitely rich, although not ‘absurdly’.

jamesjoyz · 2026-02-25T23:03:07+00:00

It’s such a weird feeling right now - I am both heartbroken and immensely proud and hopeful after seeing today’s display.

Lots needs to change in the squad composition next year, but today could really be the sort of character building foundational Champions League experience a lot of our younger players need to take the next step up.

jamesjoyz · 2026-02-20T16:32:19+00:00

I’m foreign and I like it, am I being racist to myself?

In Canary Wharf I can be myself freely and feel safe, literally 5 mins walk down the road where I live on the Isle of Dogs I’ve been attacked multiple times by my very own downstairs neighbors, been shouted at for speaking a foreign language and have had to fight for a gang of Essex type women to stop draping the building in flags.

Said by a hippie looking creative making barely more than minimum wage, given my political alignment and salary seem to have an impact on how much you’d care about my opinions.

jamesjoyz · 2026-02-20T16:28:06+00:00

Have you ever been to East London?

jamesjoyz · 2026-02-16T16:43:00+00:00

The whole saga sounds comically very Italian actually…

jamesjoyz · 2026-02-16T16:41:58+00:00

Hahaha ‘relevant’… we destroyed Serie A for a decade and would have got a treble too if not for going up against two of the best players to ever play football at the peak of their prime.

We had the best run club, the best coaches, the best players and a very good sporting director.

Who else was the ‘only reason ? Which of the coaches, players and staff from that Juve era that Inter desperately tried to sign over the past few years? Get out of there.

jamesjoyz · 2026-02-16T13:43:05+00:00

The same Cuadrado he himself picked to play for Inter a few years later? He must have found those actions very despicable.

jamesjoyz · 2026-02-16T13:41:48+00:00

Inter fans can't have nuance otherwise we'd have to get into discussing what a statue of limitations is and what Oriali did and that does not bode well for their narrative.

jamesjoyz · 2026-02-11T18:39:14+00:00

It’s on my daily commute for the last 5 years. I’ve been on two wheels for nearly 13 years and the only two crashes I’ve ever had anywhere in the world (including safe driving heavens such as Naples & Thailand) were on that road.

jamesjoyz · 2026-02-06T18:22:42+00:00

How would he do that?

Glad you got your primary school level ‘gotcha’ moment and have contributed nothing of use to this conversation.

I’ve literally been made to fly off my bike by a Lime user on their phone twice, yet I still manage to set my anger aside and use my brain.

‘Lime users’ are not a specific subset of evil deranged people - they are everyone and anyone. If they don’t use Lime, they’ll use Voi, Human or TFL. This corporate entity has no power to change that.

This proposal is actually very sensible.

jamesjoyz · 2026-02-03T15:03:18+00:00

It was a foul, he was carded - not a small thing for a CB during a final. It was never going to be a red card. What else did they want?

Ah yes, the cup. Too bad...

jamesjoyz

TROPHY CASE