You might have heard the old adage before: “Men pick their favourite football team when they’re about ten and let it upset them for the rest of their lives”.
Now, while that surely applies to most Italian men, the following would also apply: “Men pick their fantasy football team every August and let it make or break their weekend for the following nine months”.
But, what ‘s a fantasy football team (Italian pronunciation available here) and why does every Italian man seem to be talking about it?
The word ‘fantasy football’ – a compound noun made up of the prefix ‘fanta-‘ (meaning ‘virtual’ or ‘fictitious’) and ‘soccer‘ (football) – refers to the game commonly known as ‘fantasy football’.
Though the rules of the game can vary greatly according to the participants’ own preferences, fantasy football briefly consists of putting together a virtual team of real-life football players, whom, on any given match day, will score points based on their statistical performance (goals, assists, yellow cards, etc.) and their perceived contribution to the game (usually player ratings assigned by a panel of experts).
Each team battles it out with its league rivals for the entire length of the football season – the Italian Serie A runs from August to June – and the top three finishers generally earn a cash prize as well as imperishable glory and respect among friends, colleagues and at times even family members.
Here are some of the most common sentences you are likely to hear from a fantasy football aficionado:
Can you stop looking at your cell phone?
Sorry, my striker is playing.
Will you stop looking at the phone?
I’m sorry. My striker is playing.
When did you start buying the Gazzetta dello Sport every day?
Since I have to study for the auction.
When did you start buying the Gazzetta dello Sport every single day?
When I started studying for my fantasy football auction.
–
If I don’t score at least two goals tomorrow, I lose the third game in a row.
If my team doesn’t score at least two goals tomorrow, I’ll lose the third match in a row.
So, now that you broadly know the rules of the game and the drama that comes with it, you might wonder why so many people – over six million Italians according to the latest available figures – play it.
Well, football has historically been Italy’s most popular sport and the fans (supporters) cheer their teams on with a passion that is rarely matched elsewhere. However, these reasons alone don’t seem to fully account for fantasy football’s success in Italy and the real secret behind the fantasy football mania might well be impossible to make out.
What’s certain though is that, ever since fantasy football’s introduction back in 1990, the players have always seen it less as a game and more as a sort of exclusive cult with its own jargon and quasi-religious rituals.
From the ‘studying’ (studio) stages, i.e. players familiarising themselves with the rosters of each Serie A team, to the to stayi.e. the electrifying auction where participants purchase their favourite footballers and piece together their teams, everything about fantasy football is shrouded in an aura of sacredness.
Do you want to go out on Saturday?
No, I’m sorry. I have the fantasy football auction. I can’t skip it
Do you want to hang out on Saturday?
No, I’m sorry. I’ll be at the fantasy football auction.
In closing, non-players rarely ever get why fantasy footballers are so obsessed with the game and many of the latter do catch a fair deal of flak from family and friends because of it. The most seasoned players, however, have long grown indifferent to outsiders’ comments and swear that they wouldn’t trade the game for anything else in the world.