Italian amateur football is locked in a gender war after a woman player was prevented from joining a men's team, writes Paddy Agnew in Rome
She has bright blue eyes and long blonde hair and she wants to play football. Problem is, however, that she wants to play in a men's team.
Nicoletta Carlitti (34) recently made national headlines when her presence in the starting line-up of an amateur football team caused such a rumpus that the match failed to start, and was eventually postponed.
The setting is Casalbordino, a small town of 7,000 inhabitants, about 60 kilometres down the Adriatic coast from Pescara. The amateur team in question, the splendidly-named The Inn of Miracles (Osteria dei Miracoli),recently registered mother-of-one Carlitti as one of its players. Carlitti has been playing amateur football for much of her adult life, but until now always in women's teams.
Alerted to her presence in the starting line-up, the match referee, under instructions from the regional area branch of the Italian Football Federation, confiscated her federation membership card, informing her and the club that the rules do not permit women to play with men.
Federation spokesman Stefano Balducci told The Irish Times that not only are the federation's rules perfectly clear on the ban on "mixed" teams but also that they respect an existing similar ruling by world football's ruling body, FIFA.
The Nicoletta story coincided with another provocatory, headline-grabbing move by the vulcanic Luciano Gaucci, owner of Serie A (Italian Premiership) side Perugia. Gaucci is a gentleman who, in the past, has earned more than his quarter-hour of fame. In 1999 he appointed, and then almost immediately sacked, Italy's first woman coach, Carolina Morace, at third division Viterbese. Last summer, he fired Perugia's South Korean player, Jung Hwan Ahn, who had scored the "golden goal" that eliminated Italy from the World Cup finals. This summer, he prompted much speculation (and media fuss) by hiring Saad Al Gheddafi, son of Libyan leader Muammar Gadafy, as a player for Perugia.
Last month, Perugia confirmed that the club may be interested in signing two members of Sweden's Women's World Cup squad, Hannah Ljunberg and Vittoria Svensen. The move is certain to run foul of the federation but, in the era of equal opportunity, it prompts an intriguing question, namely, are there some sports in which, for straightforward physiological reasons (related above all to strength and weight), women simply cannot compete with men?
It is true, for example, that jockey Julie Krone (40), recently won one of the Breeder's Cup races at California's Santa Anita track. It is also true that, in another equestrian discipline, Pippa Funnell (34) won the Three Day Event world championship. Both women were riding against males.
Equestrian sports, where the horse counts for a lot, are one thing, but what about football? Patrizia Panico (28), centre-forward in Italy's national women's team, has no doubts: "I wouldn't see a mixed championship as a positive thing. I don't see what the point would be and the woman would always be disadvantaged. This [separation of sexes] is not in fact a form of discrimination but merely takes into account obvious differences, because men and women are different."
Carolina Morace, a former international and the woman who briefly coached Gaucci's Viterbese team four years ago, tends to agree, saying: "If the rationale behind this ruling is to physically protect women then that's fine by me. I think Nicoletta, for example, should just play with women, even if this ruling seems a bit too hidebound. After all, at amateur level, it's just a game, you play for the fun."
The fact that women are banned from playing with men, however, has had no negative impact on the growing women's interest in football, in Italy at least. Last summer, for example, 80.6 per cent of Italian women between the ages of 14 and 64 watched the World Cup finals, according to a survey carried out by Stageup.com and TNS Abacus. More recently, a Doxa survey claimed that 37 per cent of Italian women rate themselves as "chronic" football fans. More than 5,000 Italian women have joined 40 "women only" fan clubs, linked to Italy's most prestigious sides such as Juventus, Inter Milan and AS Roma.
The mere existence of women fans, football writers and expert analysts may not amount to equal opportunity but it is certainly an encouraging sign that football in Italy (and probably elsewhere too) is no longer a male-only preserve.