Paul Rouse

Then the next day when we went to Palazzo Venezia, where the famous balcony is, he said some of us stretched out our hand to shake his, but this wasn't so good because Mussolini raised his hand in the air, greeting us with the Romans.

It was me who had scored the decisive goal, but I got no special compliment.

So that's how he remembers it.

And he's put out there.

Also, Raiuno, the main Italian television station in 1990, six million people watched the documentary, sorry, a film that they made called Il Colore dello Vittorio, which was the colour of victory about the 1934 World Cup.

And it completely underplayed

the fascistic context of the competition, as indeed does the National Football Museum in Curvaciano in Florence.

And Pozzo wrote an autobiography and didn't really mention the fascist element of the success.

And of course, Jules Rimet himself

The president of FIFA, he himself after the war, was really keen to downplay the notion of connections between FIFA and Italian fascism.

But just a last question on this.

Oh, yeah, but the gap between the obsessive nature of an elite sportsperson, there's a huge space between that

and the wider context so i think to ignore the wider context while focusing just on the obsessive nature and least part misses the opportunity to render what is a kind of a much more interesting story which is neither just a fascist world cup nor an elite sporting success but both happen in in a kind of interlocking fragments okay great and very last question before we wrap up of course next time we'll be talking about brazil callum our producer wants to know why italy so bad

right now why haven't they qualified for the last three world cups it comes down i think to the collapse of the italian league italy even we will all remember we watched soccer in the in the 90s and into the 2000s the strength of the italian league the strength of italian club teams

So the collapse of serious, seriously competitive Italian teams, the inability of the people, the clubs of Italy to attract the very best players in the world has limited the success of the league, has compressed it.

And Italy simply does not produce enough good players themselves.