This is the best video of Gigi Buffon's anthem singing I could find. I think you get the idea.
The man himself says here:
“It’s true, I get very emotional during the national anthem before games. This national team means a lot to me, an awful lot.
“Italy is my country, where I was born, and that makes me very proud. I lost two great-grandparents in the war and the way I act is a sign of the recognition I have for them and how much they still meant to me.”
This is a feeling I can actually relate to, seemingly needlessly nationalistic as it is. I've always felt it, ever since I understood from the earliest ANZAC Day service what war and death and sacrifice was, and learning that I had ancestors that were part of it.
My paternal great-grandfather, Mervyn Lemaistre Wilson, fought in Belgium and I believe at Polygon Wood; and was, from my estimation from his records, hospitalised three times for lung infections and was also shot in the leg, to return eventually to Australia. My father recalls, when he dared to ask about his wartime experience, that my grandfather's summation was that he lived for three weeks thigh-deep in mud and subsisting on only stale jam sandwiches.
As I understand, my maternal great-grandfather, Edgar Percy Leheup, fought too in Belgium, possibly nearby to his Australian counterpart. An officer, he was awarded the Military Cross, the second highest award for valour as can be given by the British Empire. He was also gassed. He died in peacetime, I only found out a week ago, as a result of pneumonia brought on by lung damage. He died when my grandmother was two. She knows him only by photos.
Even though I never met these men, I do have a deep respect for them. War, as has been said before is not to be glorified, and I don't seek to do that. But I think both Gigi and myself are justifiably proud of the sacrifices these particular men made in times of uncontemplatable waste of life and a scale of slaughter not seen in the world to that point.
This is a feeling I can actually relate to, seemingly needlessly nationalistic as it is. I've always felt it, ever since I understood from the earliest ANZAC Day service what war and death and sacrifice was, and learning that I had ancestors that were part of it.
My paternal great-grandfather, Mervyn Lemaistre Wilson, fought in Belgium and I believe at Polygon Wood; and was, from my estimation from his records, hospitalised three times for lung infections and was also shot in the leg, to return eventually to Australia. My father recalls, when he dared to ask about his wartime experience, that my grandfather's summation was that he lived for three weeks thigh-deep in mud and subsisting on only stale jam sandwiches.
As I understand, my maternal great-grandfather, Edgar Percy Leheup, fought too in Belgium, possibly nearby to his Australian counterpart. An officer, he was awarded the Military Cross, the second highest award for valour as can be given by the British Empire. He was also gassed. He died in peacetime, I only found out a week ago, as a result of pneumonia brought on by lung damage. He died when my grandmother was two. She knows him only by photos.
Even though I never met these men, I do have a deep respect for them. War, as has been said before is not to be glorified, and I don't seek to do that. But I think both Gigi and myself are justifiably proud of the sacrifices these particular men made in times of uncontemplatable waste of life and a scale of slaughter not seen in the world to that point.
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