Paul Rouse

So many plane crashes.

And they could not go on a South American tour without arriving to see that there was a new junta in place.

They'd always been kidnapped.

It was really difficult.

And then to lose a leg in a bomb explosion was, for a soccer player, quite challenging.

Yes, it does.

And the story of how this happened is, I suppose it's the birth of an international transfer market in a significant way.

The president of Torino FC, Enrico Maroni, who is a very wealthy businessman, was in Argentina on a business trip and he saw a player called Julio Libonati, who was the son of Italian immigrants.

And he went and he said, I'm bringing this guy back to my club.

He had played for Argentina, won the Copa Sudamerica for what became the Copa America for Argentina.

And he won the Italian championship for Torino by virtue of his performances.

So what you then had was between 1929 and the early 1940s, more than 100 South Americans arrive here.

Well, that's like they decided to go.

They were headhunted from not just from Argentina, but also from Uruguay and Brazil and Paraguay.

And they were brought in to do this.

And these were the sons of Italian emigrants because, of course, Italian emigration to South America had been enormous at the end of the 19th century, in the early 20th century.

so these were brought in these were the rimpatriati the sun so so this way so you have a problem

In, if you're a fascist in Italy, because you're talking about the blood, you're talking about the importance of a kind of an Italy first to, to project backwards from America, this idea that the Italian nation must be preserved and developed and, and, and rendered more dynamic.

So how do you square that with the bringing in of people from abroad?

And what you do is you find the children of Italian immigrants and you bring them home and they're acceptable.