Media hype around the team in Milan

In April 2008 happened something very strange for the members of the team in Milan: within one week there came several photographers and journalists of four national and regional newspapers to Rho/Milano to visit our practice and to make some interviews. The boys were very proud, but also wondered about it. The reasons why there was so much interest from the public is partly explainable due to the difficult role the Romani population have in the Italian society in this period. To understand this better, I will give a brief introduction regarding the situation of immigration and their integration process in Italy.

It is important to know that only in recent years Italy get transformed from an emigrant country -between 1900 and 2000 30 milions of Italians leaved their home- to an immigrant one. In 1985 the number of legal immigrants was only 423.000, whereas 12 years later the number was triple: 1.240.700. In 2009 the number increased on circa 3,9 milion, the biggest groups comes from Romania and Albania.
The economical integration has been very successful: the immigrants' employment rate and their average productivity (regarding the GDP) are higher than the Italians' one.
The social integration, however, is in the very beginning. Many Italians have prejudices and fear of the foreign population. In my opinion this is not least due to the role that are playing the media and politicians. Big part of the news that are reported by newspaper, television and radio are crime news.. and mostly are reported about crimes where are involved foreigners. Most politicians utilize this created "climate of fear" to draw off the attention from real problems like unemployment, increasing poverty or corruption and to win the votes from the right part of the population. Instead of promoting integration, for example the Senate has enacted a law for the security (legge sulla sicurezza) for the citizens which enables for examples the population to create patrol groups in order to control the neighborhood. This law wasn't enacted in silence, but for months there were discussions and polemics about the "security" in the public..
The Romani people (circa 120.000, whereas 70.ooo of them have the Italian citizenship) are one of the most disadvanteged group in Italy. In the big cities the poorest of them are very visible: you can see them in front of supermarkets and in the streets for beggling, in the subways making music and in their "houses" (often only little tents) often near the railway line. The women of these group are dressed in a very different way as the Italian women: they like wearing long, colourful skirts. The Italians can observe these things every day. If you add the fact that the media report about the Romani population only in the context of crimes or resettlement measures because of illegal housing, you can immagine which impression have many Italians about them. They have are very distorted perception of the reality: the Romani population is not a bit homogenous. They are coming from many different countries, have different cultures and are living in different social conditions. There are for example many Romani people who have passed their whole life in Italy, working regulary, whose look are not distinguishable at first appearance from the Italians' one.
Coming back to the "media hype" of the team in Milan. In this climate of fear, general mistrust to foreigners and the public discussion of Romani people and their criminalization, the soccer project was a too much strange thing: a German girl, playing soccer in the Milan football team, who coach a Romani soccer team.. This mixture was so interesting that even the biggest newspaper of the political centre-right wing (Il Giornale) reported about it.