parla calcio?

NON SI MOLLA MAI!!!

The beauty with learning a new language is that you don’t just grasp an understanding of the words and their meanings – you also get a feel for the complexity of the phrasings used by other countries.

Their idioms.

A perfect example of this came at the end of a Ghigni Bianchi match report, after the recent loss to league leaders Ternana. The piece focused on the negativity of the fans after a solitary defeat that came in such an impressive run; against a side that has dominated the league to date. The fans were questioning the manager, the players and the selections – rather than simply accepting that losing 1-0 when down to 10 men for most of the second half, before losing another player to a red card in the closing stages, was a setback; nothing more.

The piece ended with the phrase: NON SI MOLLA MAI!!!

The rough, as I will always assume Google will only ever offer a technical direct translation, is “Spring is not never”.

I asked my fellow Calcio lovers on twitter to offer a better translation:

“We never give up!”

I guess it is the reverse of the slightly negative English idiom “One swallow does not make a summer”.

Here the writer was reminding his fellow fans that one defeat does not necessarily mean a dark winter for Pro Vercelli, but instead to keep the faith and turn the negativity back in to positive support.

For spring will come, and if Pro Vercelli are still riding high in the league come April, then the fans can look back on the Ternana result with the realisation that it was just a setback.

Nothing more.

The team get the opportunity to bounce back from Sunday’s defeat when they play Tritium at home in the Coppa Italia Lega Pro. The game kicks off at 7.30pm – with text updates available on Tuttoprovercelli