World Kicks: Italy

Glenn Moore’s country primer on Italy, timed for a Champions League final in Turin and a European Championship squad travelling in confidence. Women’s football began there in the 1930s and was banned by men as soon as it looked like catching on; the late-1960s revival made Italy regular hosts and winners of unofficial international tournaments, and its domestic league one of the world’s best – good enough to lure Rose Reilly, who won two Golden Boots and, having been banned for life by Scotland, was capped and made captain by Italy. Four European semi-finals and two finals followed, then stagnation while others invested. Moore traces the recovery through the 2019 quarter-final that put the team on RAI 1 in front of 6.5 million, and Juventus’s gilded squad under Joe Montemurro.