Euro 2008

Bedford, England

Last night I was in Bedford for Italy's game against the Netherlands. I was due to watch it with some of the town's Italians. However, the first people I saw were a couple of Romanians.

Both were working as chambermaids in my hotel and neither could speak any English. They knocked on my room door three times and did a very good mime for "have you seen our hoover?"

There are an estimated 14,000 people of Italian origin in Bedford, more than 10% of the population. They first started arriving in large numbers in 1951 to answer a labour shortage in the local brickworks. They were only permitted to send for their families after four years, and then only if they had an employer's certificate of satisfactory conduct.

A lot of the older ones have now returned to their homeland, but those that remain - the third and fourth generations - are just as committed to the Azzurri.

There are two venues for the tifosi to gather in Bedford, close to each other and near the town centre. The Cafe De La Giventu was established 45 years ago. This is where the remaining old boys wile away the hours playing cards and making an espresso last three hours. The Nuovo Italian Club is where the younger ones hang out, proudly wearing blue shirts, though there is no trace of an Italian accent. Every other sentence seems to be punctuated with "innit".

I was here two years ago, when a big screen was situated in a large public area near the Great Ouse, and 2,000 Italians watched the first World Cup game against Ghana. This time the atmosphere was a lot more low-key - possibly due to cockiness - and was even lower after their team's thumping.

"How can this be happening to the world champions?" I heard one say as they cleared the venue quicker than I've ever seen people head for the exits on the final whistle. But that didn't stop the owner, Angelo Russo, extending hospitable bottles of Peroni, which naturally we accepted. It would have been rude not to!