Italy’s American football league played its championship game on Saturday.
In Toledo.
Toledo, Ohio.
It was as if some American sumo enthusiasts took their show to Tokyo, or an amateur baguette maker tried to set up shop on the streets of Paris.
Still, in the state where the National Football League was born, eager Italian part-timers playing for the Ancona Dolphins and the Firenze Guelfi suited up for a game to decide their country’s title.
And a few thousand Americans turned up in the summer football doldrums between college and N.F.L. seasons and paid to see them.
It looked a lot like a typical American football game with tailgating, coaches on the sidelines, refs in striped outfits and players banging heads after a touchdown.
But a close inspection showed some incongruities.
To start, the players were a lot less bulky. Italian could be heard from the sidelines, and Italian flags were being waved in the stands. Some spectators arrived in costume with an Italian, or faux Italian theme, like Mario of video game fame or an Italian baker.
Most of the largely American spectators seemed to have chosen a team to root for randomly. Fans of the Dolphins predominated, and they were a little disappointed with the final score, Firenze Guelphi 49, Ancona Dolphins 19.
The sight of two football teams from a European nation facing off in a Midwestern American city raises the question, though: How did this happen?
After playing at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota and graduating in 2001, Nick Eyde extended his football career with five seasons in Italy as a quarterback and defensive back. He played in the 2009 Italian Bowl, the championship game, and stayed in Italy after his playing career to be a color commentator.
After moving to the Toledo area to work in real estate, he began thinking: “What if we did a destination Italian Bowl?”
The league got on board, successfully staged the game stateside in 2023, and brought it back to the Glass Bowl on the University of Toledo’s campus this year.
“A lot of the Italians who came had never heard of Toledo,” Mr. Eyde acknowledged.
A city without a major league or top college team has embraced the game.
“It might not make a lot of sense, but it’s fun,” Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz of Toledo said on social media. “We got points for raising our hand and saying, ‘Heck, we’ll do it.’”
In Italy, soccer is king. But there is some American-style football history.
A game was played in Genoa in 1913 between crews of the battleships Connecticut and Kansas. Army and Air Force teams met in a game in Florence in 1945 called the Spaghetti Bowl. Cpl. John Moody, known as Big Train, a future Hall of Famer, scored two touchdowns for the winning Army side.
Enough Italians were intrigued by the sport to start thinking about playing it themselves.
The first national league started in 1980. Most teams have American-style nicknames — some are borrowed from the N.F.L., while others range more widely: the Milano Rhinos, the Legnano Frogs. Firenze Guelfi take their name from the medieval Guelphs, a faction that backed the pope against the Holy Roman Empire.
The Italian players aren’t paid, except for small reimbursements for travel expenses. (Thus the name of the 2007 short novel by John Grisham about Italian football, “Playing for Pizza.”)
Each team can have a maximum of three American imports, who understandably are far more experienced than their Italian teammates. As a result, they tend to be key players on the field, offensively and defensively. The Americans get a modest salary and perhaps rent and the use of a car.
Many of them came from a small college background in the United States and found Italian football to be a change.
“We have trainers on our team, and we do have a training room, but yeah, it’s nothing like what Williams offers,” said Frankie Stola, a wide receiver for Firenze who played at Williams College.
For the amateur Italian players, the opportunity to travel to the home of football brings “a mix of disbelief, excitement, and overwhelming enthusiasm,” said Barbara Allaria, the press officer for the Italian football federation.
That excitement is seen on the gridiron. Mr. Eyde likened the players’ passion to that of American high school players.
“This is that type of passion,” he said. “But these guys are 18 to 40 years old.”
He noted that the players were largely local to their team’s city. “There’s tremendous pride in being part of their community,” he said.
Toledo celebrated the arrival of the Italian Bowl with activities, including a punt, pass and kick competition for local mayors, an Italian restaurant week and youth clinics.
The spectators at the Glass Bowl saw a reasonable quality of play. People who follow the league compare it to small-college ball in the states.
Mr. Eyde said the average level of play was comparable to “high Division III,” with the American players sometimes better than that and some of the Italians far less skilled. “It’s an interesting mix,” he said.
Mr. Stola said that Firenze would beat some, but not all, of the small college teams he faced at Williams “just because American teams practice so much more than us and have more experienced coaches who are paid full-time. “
“But you know, we have a lot of grown men on this team and that makes a real difference,” he added.
Colin Schooler, a linebacker for Guelfi who played at Arizona and Texas Tech, said of his Italian teammates, “they work very hard in their training and are very eager to learn from Americans.”
“They do not have the years or fundamentals and the luxury of starting the sport at an early age like Americans do,” he said. “They are strong and fast, but just need help with the technical side of the sport. The commitment and sacrifices that are made to fund and play the sport out here is something I admire. It shows a whole different side of what it means to play for the love of the sport.”
Victor Mather, who has been a reporter and editor at The Times for 25 years, covers sports and breaking news.
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