A Great Moment for Europe, Soccer, Italy, and Mario Balotelli

Let’s face it: Canada isn’t a soccer country. Yes, our seven-year-olds join leagues and run around chasing a ball for an hour once a week. Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto have teams in the MLS. And when the World Cup is going on, you can’t get a decent souvlaki, plate of spaghetti or chorizo sausage in our major cities without running into mobs of men honking their horns and waving various European flags. But for the most part, Canadians are bystanders to the beautiful game. Here at the National Post building in Toronto, for instance, while watching Wednesday’s game between Spain and Portugal on the big-screen TV in the cafeteria, I was accompanied by exactly one other viewer (a member of the cleaning staff shouting profane admonitions every time Cristiano Ronaldo launched a ball 10 feet over the Spanish net, and who admitted that she wouldn’t care about the result if it weren’t for the fact that she had 20 dollars riding on Portugal).

But even for non-soccer fans, the Euro 2012 soccer tournament is a spectacle worth celebrating.

For months now, the narrative about Europe has been that the EU is falling apart; and that the cultural ties once thought to bind Europeans together have proven illusory. And yes, it’s true that, say, Germans do austerity better than Greeks, and that Scandinavians have a different approach to public accountability than Italians. But when it comes to soccer — sorry, “football” — Europe is a continent that rises in common frenzy. Perhaps a single sport is thin paste to hold a continent together. On the other hand, what essay about the Canadian identity goes more than a paragraph or two without referencing hockey?

Then again, facile sports comparisons between NHL hockey and Euro soccer are problematic — because North American soil, unlike Europe’s, has not witnessed within living memory a ground war that killed about 50 million people. The host nations of Euro 2012, Poland and Ukraine, collectively comprise the “Bloodlands,” as author Timothy Snyder described the great swathe of mass graves sandwiched between Hitler and Stalin. From the Holocaust to the Ukrainian genocide to the Katyn massacre, these two countries lie at the very epicentre of 20th-century European horror and suffering. From a historian’s point of view, it is an uplifting sight to see them share the international spotlight for this very different reason.

All international soccer tournaments yield ironic pairings. So it has been this time around, with Europe’s banker, Germany, playing continental pauper Greece in the quarter-final. (The richer team won.) Thursday’s semi-final at National Stadium in Warsaw between two former European Axis powers likewise gave rise to bad jokes about former German-Italian collaborations that took an initial turn through Poland. Yet the game itself was extraordinary, largely thanks to one man: Mario Balotelli.

European soccer often makes headlines here in the West for all the wrong reasons: ignorant bigots in the cheap seats shouting racist slogans, or making Nazi salutes. And there has been some of that in Europe this year. But on Thusday, television viewers all around the world beheld the sight of Italian fans cheering rapturously for Mr. Balotelli, a black player born in Sicily to Ghanaian immigrants, and then sent to foster care with a native-born Italian family (thus the Balotelli surname).

Mr. Balotelli’s spotty disciplinary record and off-field personal dramas aren’t pretty. But his game is a thing of beauty. His first goal on Thursday was a picture-perfect header off a precise cross from Antonio Cassano, who’d evaded sloppy defending by a pair of bumbling German guards (I will omit the Hogan’s Heroes reference). Sixteen minutes later, he scored again on a highlight-reel 20-yard blast that left the German goalie utterly paralyzed except, somewhat pathetically, for a left arm lifted wanly in the general direction of the ball’s flight path. (Mr. Balotelli then proceeded to take off his shirt, earning a yellow card. Apparently, the rules supply no discretion to the referees on this score, even in the case of bodies such as Mr. Balotelli’s.) Thus did Italy prevail — notwithstanding a late-game penalty-kick goal for Germany — setting up an Italy-Spain confrontation in the finals on Sunday.

All in all, it’s a bright moment for Europe amid a time of broad malaise on the continent. And for anyone looking for a quiet Italian meal this weekend, it’s probably best if they cook it at home.