Italians are all about football. You can barely meet a person, who doesn’t have their preferred team in Serie A. Also, di Azzurri – the Italian national team – are adored by all the citizens. While most of the Serie A and, obviously, matches with the national team (in the World Cup or the European Championship) can be watched in English, it never hurts to catch some of the Italian phrases – especially if you have Italian friends.
Which Italian words or phrases you should know before starting a football discussion with Italian?
Calcio – game’s on!
When talking about Italian football, there is one word we simply can’t skip: calcio. It’s a word, which is the origin for a whole family of terms connected to football. Literally, it means „to kick” and it’s used with a variety of prefixes, infixes, and suffixes to create another words connected to the beloved sport of Italians.
While calcio means kicking, il calcio is football and di calcio – the whole team of players. Small differences, huh? No worries – you’ll catch them in no time, especially if you are a huge fan of this sport.
Bandiera – show your loyalty
La bandiera literally means „a flag” and no, we don’t mean the flags held by line judges. La bandiera pertains to the player, who dedicated his whole (or almost all of it) career to one team. Examples? Francesco Totti, the AS Rome attacker, who spent his whole career in this team. He ended his career just a couple of years ago, so if you are a fan of Italian football, you must have heard about him.
Why is this an important word? It’s because Italians are really passionate about their national sport and while transfers are a common thing in football, they give the most credit and value to the players who stay in their Italian teams even if even if foreign teams offered them a lot of money for the transfer.
Scommesse Sportive – do you feel like betting?
Italians are really passionate about their sports and thus – they might be eager to gamble a little. That’s what scommesse sportive stands for – it’s just sports betting. If you hear an Italian talking about it, one thing can be said for sure: an important match is coming up and they fans are eager to feel some adrenaline rush.
If you feel like having a bit of extra fun when watching Seria A or championships with di Azzurri, just check out scommesse sportive. Your Italian friends will surely help you – most of them know a lot about this type of gambling, whether they’re betting a few euros for fun or making money out of it.
Commettere falli – ouch, that hurt!
Commettere falli means exactly what it brings to your mind with the sound of those words: it means „to committ a foul”. As you can see, this word will never be said with a smile (well, unless someone from the Italian team fouled – then the player can even get praise). Fouls are one of the least favourite parts of football for each fan and player of this game.
Tifoso – when you are a fan
Tifoso means a „fan” or „supporter”, so it can be heard in conversations about football pretty often. Most of the Italians are huge fans of football and they are supporters of a chosen team from Serie A. Can you describe yourself as tifoso of any Italian team?
That’s not all!
Keep in mind, that the mentioned words are just an examples – used commonly among Italians, so it should be easier for you to catch other phrases and words, when you will be able to catch the basics. We hope, that the journey to learn whole Serie A and di Azzurri dictionary will be an interesting one for you!