The Italy national football team (Italian: Nazionale di calcio dell'Italia), represents Italy in association football and is controlled by the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), the governing body for football in Italy. Italy is the second most successful national team in the history of the World Cup behind Brazil, having won four titles (1934, 1938, 1982, 2006). They have also won one European championship (1968), one Olympic football tournament (1936) and two Central European International Cups.
The traditional colour of the national team (as well as all Italian national teams and athletes officially representing Italy) is azure blue (azzurro, in Italian), due to the "Azzurro Savoia" (Savoy Blue), the colour traditionally linked to the royal dynasty which unified Italy in 1861, and maintained in the official standard of the Italian President.
The team does not have a designated "home stadium" like certain national teams. The primary training ground is at the FIGC headquarters in Coverciano, Florence and the team plays their home matches at various stadiums throughout Italy.
Read more about Italy National Football Team: Historical Kits, Coaches, Recent Results and Forthcoming Fixtures, Head-to-Head Records Against Other Countries
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“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“Lump the whole thing! Say that the Creator made Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Our national experience in Americanizing millions of Europeans whose chief wish was to become Americans has been a heady wine which has made us believe, as perhaps no nation before us has ever believed, that, given the slimmest chance, all peoples will pattern themselves upon our model.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)
“...I’m not money hungry.... People who are rich want to be richer, but what’s the difference? You can’t take it with you. The toys get different, that’s all. The rich guys buy a football team, the poor guys buy a football. It’s all relative.”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“giving a nod, up the chimney he rose.
He sprang to his sleigh, to his team gave a whistle,
And away they all flew like the down of a thistle,
But I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.””
—Clement Clarke Moore (1779–1863)