No usually the political figures are football league owners.

Jokes aside, I don't know, the obsession with soccer is extreme in Italy. For people who don't care about soccer like I did, there is so much you have to endure just "because of soccer"

It's not just Italy. The UK is also insane along with some cities in Spain. In the UK one of the rivalries supposedly goes back to the War of the Roses [1].

The way I describe EU football games to Americans is take the craziest student section at a US college football game and extrapolate that energy to the entire stadium.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeds_United_F.C.–Manchester_U...