Roosters "Come Home" to Roost in Lead up to Bastille Day

Italy's recent Euro football triumph came with an unprecedented outpouring of anti-English sentiment throughout Europe. In over a century of football, nothing similar had been seen.

England's ignominious elimination by tiny Iceland in the 2016 Euros, when Brexit was just a proposal, gave the continent comic relief – the Gallic rooster's laughter at the mighty English lion's fall still echoes. The game with Italy was different. Antipathy was palpable, felt even by those with close ties to England, like the Scots. Ancient grievances resurfaced. The English even attacked their own players, in the aftermath. ???

Italy supporters, like me, know hostility to England was not love for Italy. Those, like me, with Sicilian blood know it even more. Italy, and more so Sicily, have been conquered for millennia. People there learnt (foreign) rulers differ, and, when friends fail, the next option is an enemy of an enemy. I recalled this when, in the 2016 Euros, the French lit up the Eiffel Tower in the Italian flag's colours to celebrate Italy eliminating reigning double champions Spain, France's potential opponent. I also recalled Europe aligning against Napoleon, son of Italians.

Much of Europe is explained by ties between enemies of enemies. Historical rivals repeatedly, and incoherently, aligned to face common foes. Churchill, on allying with Stalin, said he would have dealt with the devil to defeat Hitler. It goes beyond Europe. Britain and the USA, once enemies, forged their "special relationship" fighting Germany and Japan. Both also aligned in the failed attempt to defeat the Taliban, whose predecessor, the CIA backed mujahideen, was once a supported enemy of the common Soviet enemy. ???

Europe also reproposes its past by selective commemoration. This shapes its present and future. 14 July – Bastille Day – is important in both Sicily and France. It is the Feast of St Rosalia, Norman patron of Sicily's capital, Palermo. It called her in aid during the Black Plague, with Anthony van Dyck painting Saint Rosalia Interceding for the City of Palermo (pictured) while quarantined there. Today she is appealed to, internationally, to intercede against COVID-19.

Bastille Day's ideals reflect those of the Sicilian Vespers, a successful Sicilian revolt in 1282 against the French-born Charles I. The revolt is referred to in the Italian national anthem and the subject of two Giuseppe Verdi operas – one in French and one in Italian.

The Sicilian Vespers has also been proposed as a romanticised founding point of the Mafia, as "freedom fighter". But this is false. The word "Mafia" was only used some 600 year later. What instead emerged was that the US military, to facilitate its invasion of Sicily in July 1943, deployed mafiosi from the US, as "consultants", establishing ties with local criminals. Much like the mujahideen in Afghanistan, they were recruited in a process, continued after the war, to undermine State authority. Fascist Italy had at least temporarily put the Sicilian Mafia out of business.

What also emerged were war crimes committed by the US occupiers. One, at Biscari, saw the mass execution of prisoners, on Bastille Day, 14 July 1943. Sicily was Italy's only region defended before Italy surrendered to the Allies, holding out for longer than France, Poland or Yugoslavia. It was the first Axis land to feel the retribution of occupying Allies.

Consistent with the Mafia law of silence (omertà), these war crimes were suppressed in Italy, despite being studied in the US. They show the world of difference between parallel directed enmity, which never unites, and the true friendship embodied in Italy's triumphant team spirit at the Euros. ???