Football and Fascism: The National Game Under Mussolini

Subject: Academic article assignment

Author of article: Mark Doidge

Date: 26/02/2018

Football and Fascism: The national game under Mussolini

This academic article is written by Mark Doidge, a senior research fellow and early career ambassador at the University of Brighton (Brighton, 2018). Mark Doidge reviews researches performed by Martin Simon, the author of the book called ‘’Football and Fascism: The national game under Mussolini’’, for this article. In addition, Martin studied the complex relationship between the fascist regime in Italy and football in his book.

The purpose why this article is created is to highlight studies of Simon Martin’s book because as in the days of fascism, football is linked to Italian culture. ‘’The author, Simon Martin,  argues that the regimes attempt to use sport to formulate identity actually forced it to recognize existing tensions within society, thereby paradoxically permitting the existence of diversity and individuality’’ (bloomsburry, 2004). Studies such as these can help to understand this and to learn more.

Mark states that Martin Simon’s work is focused on nationalism. However, he also demonstrates how Mussolini utilized the powerful symbolism of sport, Fascism and Ancient Rome to encourage a potent image of Fascist Italy both at home and abroad. Mussolini utilized tools to inspire national identity, including the symbols of Ancient Rome and extensive trans-national communication networks. On the other hand, sport became a central assumption to his vision. Furthermore, Mussolini was more into fencing and boxing but the realized that football could reach a wider audience. This shows that Mussolini actually had a tactic in his mind and that’s why he chose for a wider audience.  Mussolini wanted to have more power for sure. Therefore, the Serie A was created and showed football fans the extent of Italy’s boundaries.

Italian domination  in international football is one of the other things that was important and indicated by Martin in his book. ‘’Oriundi’s , first generation Italians from South America, were used in the 1934 World Cup to garner propaganda for the regime’’ (Martin, 2005). The winning of the tournament was that important that Italian migrants in South America were re-naturalized to ensure the best players were playing for the national team. This goes further than only playing football for fun, but it is more something like a war.