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fpbMy LJ entry last night was written from the heart, as soon as Totti had scored and almost before the game was actually over. Then I listened to two separate teams of English commentators, neither of them with any sympathy for Italy (any time Italy win a soccer match, two English journalists get nosebleeds) and at least one of them shamefully pro-Australian; they agreed that the penalty was right, that the Australian player had flung himself into the Italian's so as to force him down whatever he did. The opinion of Alan Shearer, former England captain and one of the finest goalscorers England ever produced, was particularly strong in this regard: if that had happened to him, he implied, he would have expected to get a penalty and regarded himself as cheated if he did not.
Now I have been reading the Italian commentators. They all seem to agree with me that the penalty was "soft", "generous", even dubious. So: all of us, glad though we are to be through, seem to worry about the legitimacy of the penalty; while all the English commentators I heard, rabidly jealous of Italy though they may be, odiously partisan and biased, agree that the penalty was there. I'm not saying that you could not find, in both countries, people who disagree; but that seems to me to be the atmosphere. So, who's right?
Now I have been reading the Italian commentators. They all seem to agree with me that the penalty was "soft", "generous", even dubious. So: all of us, glad though we are to be through, seem to worry about the legitimacy of the penalty; while all the English commentators I heard, rabidly jealous of Italy though they may be, odiously partisan and biased, agree that the penalty was there. I'm not saying that you could not find, in both countries, people who disagree; but that seems to me to be the atmosphere. So, who's right?
