Football: Outside Brazil, Italy probably has more football fanatics than any other country on earth. In 2001, out of a total population of nearly 57 million Italians - adults, children and infants - more than 26 million declared themselves football fans.
This is a nation of bitter ideological divisions and an almost racist north-south divide, whose precarious unity finds one principal expression: its national soccer team. It is a society where politics and football are intertwined from the slum street to the presidential suite.
Now, on the eve of a World Cup - a competition the Italians have won three times (only Brazil have won more) - come two books that attempt to explain the fury and frustration of that country's abiding passion, the game of calcio. They are as different as two books about one very particular subject can be: one a charming journalistic memoir, the other a forensically detailed academic history.
In 1985 Paddy Agnew left his comfortable job as sports editor of the Sunday Tribune to try to make a treacherous living as a freelance journalist in Rome. Coverage of Italian religion and football were to become his meal ticket for most of the next two decades: in particular, the exploits of a charismatic Pole, Pope John Paul II, a skilful Irishman, Liam Brady, and a deeply flawed Argentine genius, Diego Maradona.
He writes about all of them with sympathy and insight. Journalists are often on strongest ground when describing the travails of individual human beings. Agnew is an admirer of the chubby little working class hero from Buenos Aires, who became a contemporary messiah to Naples soccer followers before he was brought down by his appalling drug-fuelled lifestyle, his links with the Neapolitan mafia, and the ferocious pressure on him to single-handedly produce miracles for an under-performing team.
At the other end of the spectrum, Agnew paints a poignant portrait of the exploitation and ultimate dashing of young hopes which are so much part of the cruel game that is professional football everywhere. He tells the story of Ettore Gandini, a talented goalkeeper from near the Swiss border, who laboriously - and often painfully, given his constant knee problems - worked his way up through the divisions to become reserve goalkeeper at Reggina, an obscure side in the deep southern "toe" of Italy's "boot". After 10 years as a professional, Gandini was brought on to play for precisely seven minutes in the Italian premiership, Serie A, for an already-relegated team.
Agnew is also good on the emergence of Silvio Berlusconi and his Forza Italia ("Up Italy") party on the back of the great showman's success as chairman of AC Milan. Much in that phenomenon was based on using football as a galvanising mechanism in a fractured society. "I have chosen to take to the field," he declared in the broadcast announcing his entry into politics in 1994. Before his recent downfall, he rarely missed an opportunity to link his success with that of star footballers in general and Milan in particular.
He also intervened directly in football, most dramatically in 2000, when he launched an astonishing attack on the popular Italian coach Dino Zoff following the national team's narrow and honourable defeat by world champions France in the European championship final, leading to Zoff's resignation.
Foot's book covers some of the same territory as Agnew's, and much more. This is a book for the anoraks, those who like their information dense. It is no accident that the author is a lecturer in modern Italian history. Bravely, he dedicates the book to his football-loving father and football-hating son, making one wonder if his passion for the minutiae of another country's sporting obsession made him something of a household bore on the subject.
The Irish reader will be irritated that there is so little in this large volume about Liam Brady, one of the most successful foreigners to play in Serie A. Despite the author's self-confessed hero worship of the former Arsenal man, he gets far less space than forgotten English mediocrities such as Joe Baker, Luther Blissett and Mark Hateley. Another inexplicable omission is any serious mention of one of the worst defeats in the history of the Italian game: the only time the national side did not make it to the World Cup finals, knocked out by little Northern Ireland in Belfast in 1958.
However, there is some excellent material, if the reader has the patience to persevere. There are real characters: Egri Erbstein, the Hungarian Jew who created the Grande Torino, perhaps the greatest Italian club team ever, and died with his team in an infamous plane crash above Turin in 1949; Heleno Herrera, "the wizard", who used psychology to convince the all-conquering Inter Milan of the 1960s that they could "win without getting out of the bus"; Gianni Brera, the brilliant writer and champion of the Italian catennacio (padlock) defensive system, who believed that the perfect game would end 0-0; Christian Lucarelli, the left-wing star who wore a Che Guevara T-shirt under his Italian jersey and took a massive pay cut so that he could play for his second division home town, Livorno.
Both Foot and Agnew write alarmingly about the drug-taking, match-fixing and financial scandals that seem to be endemic in Italian football. The drug-taking goes back at least to the 1960s: one whistle-blowing player of that era later wrote about feeling "as strong as five men" and foaming at the mouth after an injection by a club doctor. One of the most spectacular match-fixing incidents took place just 12 months ago. Three days after the last game of the 2004-2005 season, in which Genoa had narrowly beaten Venezia (after 15 of Venezia's players had called in sick or injured) and thus secured promotion to Serie A, a Venezia manager was caught leaving a factory owned by the Genoa chairman with €250,000 in his car.
"For the fifth time in 24 years, betting, match-fixing and financial scandals had brought the Italian football championship into question. The system was rotten," writes Foot.
In the past month the rottenness has spread to new extremes, with Juventus's alleged match-fixing exploits, apparently master-minded by their former general manager Luciano Moggi - long one of the shadiest characters in Italian soccer - threatening to doom the current champions to relegation, while AC Milan, Fiorentina and Lazio face similar accusations
Yet despite all the villainy surrounding it, the beautiful game continues to unite and enthral Italians. Forza Italia communicates a little of the taste and smell of the country and its football fanaticism in this month of soccer madness; Calcio details the facts.
Andy Pollak is director of the Centre for Cross Border Studies in Armagh and Dublin. He has been an FAI season ticket holder at Lansdowne Road since 1987.
Forza Italia: A Journey in Search of Italy and its Football By Paddy Agnew Ebury Press, 314pp. £10.99
Calcio: A History of Italian Football By John Foot Fourth Estate, 565 pp. £15
Six essential reads for the World Cup season
Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football By David Winner (2001, Bloomsbury): Journalist David Winner ambitiously tries to offer a unifying theory of Dutch society, through the lens of their football team. Like the Dutch national side, it doesn't always succeed, but it offers plenty to think about on the way.
How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization By Franklin Foer (2006, Arrow)
New Republic editor Foer (brother of novelist Jonathan Safran, and who contributes an amusing afterword to The Thinking Fan's Guide) offers an unusual examination of the modern game, looking at the global interplay between the game and local and international politics and culture.
Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life By Alex Bellos (2003, Bloomsbury)
Bellos, a Guardian journalist, delves into the footballing culture of the most beloved overdogs in World Cup history - Brazil. England may have invented the game, but Brazil, with Pele, Garrincha, Socrates and the famed yellow jersey, made it beautiful.
Football Against the Enemy By Simon Kuper (1994, reissued by Orion)
Kuper travels through 22 countries, from South Africa to Russia, and examines the way each has shaped and been shaped by football, ending up with a fusion of international travelogue, sociological guide and sports history.
Football in Sun and Shadow: An Emotional History of World Cup Football By Eduardo Galeano (1995, Fourth Estate)
A lyrical look at World Cups past from Uruguay's eminent writer and historian, possibly the world's most erudite football fan. Great games and notable players from tournaments past are given Galeano's poetic treatment.
Laptop Dancing and the Nanny Goat Mambo: A Sports Writer's Year By Tom Humphries (2003, Pocket Books/Townhouse)
Tom Humphries of The Irish Times presents an often hysterical, always revealing account of his adventures in 2002, including his part in the Keane-McCarthy feud.
Davin O'Dwyer