This Italy mob mean business

IAN RUSH couldn’t settle in Italy; the Welsh striker said it was like living in a foreign country. But San Nicola — the patron saint of Bari — is, they say, a friend to travellers and up to 6,000 Irish soccer fans were certainly making themselves at home in the coastal city yesterday.

Burly men in Shamrock Rovers polo shirts share bowls of creamy pasta like Lady and the Tramp sucking up the same piece of spaghetti; Waterford lads critique the Chianti while Peroni is the beer of choice. If we go any more native an Irish victory in the stadium named after the aforementioned saint (ironically, an away team has never actually won against Italy there) will see the Via Napoli clogged with thousands of Paddys in fashionable leather shoes and skin-tight tops, furiously beeping the horn of their stylish mopeds.

But as Gerry Adams might have remarked about the Boys in Green: they haven’t gone away you know. It’s like we never left Italy. The local paper splashes ‘Bentornati’ or ‘Welcome Back’ across its front page and many older soldiers in Trap’s Army look like they are still living in 1990.