11.   Imagine what would happen in American football or Canadian hockey or Italian soccer if the sentiments of the home crowd could overturn a call.

12.   In recent years, coming at American football the long way, through Italian soccer, I have begun to understand the weeklong anticipation of the big game.

13.   In Rome, meanwhile, a major Italian soccer commissioner suggested that creatine be banned or greatly restricted.

14.   Italian soccer is also quite a serious competition, a combination of operatic festivity in the stands and tactical and technical excellence on the field.

15.   Italian soccer fans shower visiting athletes with insults relating to their legitimacy and their ancestors as casually as they sip Soave Bolla.

16.   Italian soccer stars do not easily decide to play in another country.

17.   Italian soccer teams have fiscal years ending in June to mirror the August to May season.

18.   Juventus is the third Italian soccer team to go public, following the two big Roman clubs, Lazio and Roma.

19.   Of the several sites devoted to Italian soccer, perhaps the most interesting is RETE the International Soccer Pages.

20.   Several Italian soccer players have been implicated in a sex ring that provided prostitutes through an Internet Web site.