Paul Rouse

And he said of that, he was disdainful.

This is a communist.

who was disdainful of the idea that it was a fascist enterprise.

He said, no one ever became fascist because they supported Vittorio Pozzo's Italian team.

And he went on and he questioned, he said, these words of opium for the masses or the corruption of consciousness and souls.

And then he says, not at all.

Please stop talking nonsense.

I suppose I don't like a history which is a mass ascription of either motivation or impact onto great swathes of people within any country.

That would be my starting point.

Now, it would be a fool who would argue that it had no impact.

So I'm not trying to argue that in any shape or form.

What I argue for is a more tempered,

and a more nuanced understanding of how this actually worked.

And I think there are a series of questions that are worth asking in relation to this.

So in what way would Italy and Italian society and fascism

have behaved differently if the World Cup had not been played and won in 34 and in 36 or 38?

In 36 with the Berlin Olympics when they won the soccer and 38 when they won the World Cup again.

Do we imagine because of that, that Italy would not have gone into war with Germany and moved on?

Would the non-staging of the Berlin Olympics in 36 really have altered the course of Nazi Germany?

Similarly, the Brazilian military dictatorship, which oversaw the winning of the World Cup in 1970,