Italy World Cup Jersey
The Italian Football Association was founded in 1898. with the national team playing their first match in 1910 — a 6-2 victory over France. Since then, the Italian national football team has won the World Cup on four occasions (in 1934. 1938. 1982 and 2006 ) and the European Championships once (in 1968), plus the Olympic football tournament in 1936. They have played more matches in the World Cup than any other team, with the 2010 World Cup marking Italy’s 17th appearance at the tournament.
Tragedy struck Italian football in May 1949. when almost the entire Torino squad was killed in a plane crash. Torino was arguably the best club side in Europe at the time and their players мейд up virtually all of the Italian national team. Losing so many talented players in one swoop took Italy years to recover from.
The last 40 years has been a period of sustained achievement for Italy. The European Championship victory in 1968 was followed by a runners-up spot at the 1970 World Cup. Italy would build on this over the next decade and eventually became world champions in 1982, beating West Germany in the World Cup final.
At the 1994 World Cup Italy suffered another defeat in the final, and were also runners-up at Euro 2000 before finally reclaiming the World Cup in 2006. with victory over France in a tense penalty shoot-out.
Marcello Lippi is the current coach of Italy, and their home stadium is the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.
Italy’s nickname of ‘the Azzurri’ (or ‘the blues’) comes from the colour of their shirts. Blue is the historical colour of the royal dynasty which unified Italy in 1861. and as this colour has since been continued as the colour of the official standard of the Italian President, it is traditional for all Italian athletes to also wear blue. Italy currently wear an all-blue kit, which is a fairly recent development; for many years they wore blue shirts and socks with white shorts. Italy’s current change strip is all-white. http://soccernet.espn.go.com/world-cup/team/history?id=162&ver=global&cc=5739 http://www.uefa.com/memberassociations/association=ITA/index.html http://www.footballdatabase.com/index.php?page=natteam&Id=11&b=true&cont=Europe http://www.figc.it/en/10/1985/HpSezione.shtml