In the Guardian by John Carlin on the Italians after 3 clubs made it to the semis:
"why it is that a people who are so expansive in their love of life should be so constipated when it comes to football. The answer, as an Italian friend explained on Friday, is that Italians do not correspond entirely to the caricature. Beneath the bella figura posturings, there is a hard-nosed pragmatist at work. When the issue at hand is truly serious (and how much more serious than football does it get?), when what is at stake is winning or losing, you don't mess about. You win at all costs. You are - and this is a quality none of the Italian teams who triumphed last week can be denied - ruthlessly competitive, and fiercely attentive to detail.
Of course, if the Italians did not possess these qualities how would they have produced such architecture and art, how would they have contrived to become - from Roman times to the present day - such a mightily successful nation? Because they keep their eye on the final objective. Which is, above all, not to lose. That's why it is absurd to go on the attack when you are winning. To enjoy going forward for the sake of going forward. Machiavelli anticipated all this 500 years ago. In The Prince , the cynic's bible, he defined in words that ring through down the ages Italian football's not only chief but sole article of faith. 'One judges,' he wrote, 'by the result.'
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Ronaldo, in the same article compares italian football to chess