Many years ago, the only way to follow Italian football games as they were being played was to listen to the radio’s Tutto il Calcio minuto per minuto with the unmistakeable voice of Niccolo Carosio and other commentators trying to depict in graphic Italian and modulation of voice what was being played on the football pitch.

Then along came Melita Cable and the opportunity of watching football live, both British and Italian games. Until last season, Melita used to transmit as many as four or more English Football League games live, and more with delayed viewing, and up to four Italian games live plus more with delayed viewing.

Then this year Melita somehow lost the rights it had over Italian football and its new rival, Multiplus gained the exclusive rights to most Italian football matches. As will be explained later, Melita still has the rights to transmit a few Italian Serie A football games, and of course the rights to air all English football matches.

This change, coming so sudden and after so many years of quite an established Sunday afternoon pattern for many Maltese who follow Italian football, has left them desperately seeking ways and means of gaining access to Italian football, now that the Italian Serie A begins this weekend.

Most have chosen Multiplus but in many households giving up Melita and getting Multiplus has been the subject of endless debate. Many compromised by getting Multiplus and keeping Melita but others had to choose between the two, mostly for financial reasons.

The following is an approximate comparison, also offering other options mostly available to Italians but not Maltese, as given in a recent Panorama (www.panorama.it) article.

Melita Cable

Roughly, Melita will be showing what is being broadcast by La7, which has agreements with Cagliari and Lecce, sources in the sector said. In an advert that appeared yesterday, Melita announced 20 games over the weekend: nine Barclays Premier (UK) League, four from the Coca-Cola Championship, two from the German Bundesliga and four from the Spanish Primera Liga but only one (unspecified) Italian Serie A game.

Multiplus

Multiplus will be showing the football games live that are being aired on MondoSky; these will be matches played by Juventus, Inter, Milan, Roma, Messina, Palermo, Udinese, Cagliari, Fiorentina and Livorno. In fact, in an advert which appeared yesterday, Multiplus said it would be broadcasting the Fiorentina – Sampdoria game yesterday, the Ascoli – Milan and Inter – Treviso matches both live as well as the Juventus – Chievo match to be played in the evening.

In a statement last week, Multiplus said it has assigned two different channels specifically for the Serie A games and has exclusive rights for the home games of Juventus, Milan, Inter, Roma, Fiorentina, Parma, Udinese, Reggina, Sampdoria, Siena, Livorno, Messina, Palermo, Chievo, Empoli A minimum of three live matches per week will be transmitted.

Last week Multiplus introduced Sports+ 1 and Sports+ 2 on channels 803 and 804 respectively. As from yesterday the channels started transmitting Serie A games live.

The games and the show will be repeated at different times.

Boxes should auto tune for Sports+ 1 when clients are watching Boomerang, TCN, SAT2000, Living and Eurosport. The same procedure applies for Sport+ 2. Boxes should auto tune when clients are watching Discovery Channel, LA 7, National Geographic or TCM. Channels 803 & 804 are presently on test card. Customers seeking additional information can contact Multiplus on 2315 0000.

In Italy

This has been the year of revolution in Italy. What used to be RAI’s exclusive with Novantesimo Minuto has now spread to Mediaset, which will be dedicating some 10 hours every Sunday, starting with lunchtime’s Guida al Campionato on Italia 1, stopping for the duration of the games and then coming big with a brand-new high quality programme by Paolo Bonolis and Monica Vanali. Bonolis is a self-professed Inter fan and this is being touted as a first, breaking the supposedly “neutral” commentators whose support of a particular team everybody knew about.

RAI’s Quelli che il Calcio with Simona Ventura this year loses the minimal links to the games which kept the viewers, in a way, abreast of what was going on in the football pitches.

All this is free to air. But those who want to watch live football games have to pay. Direct games can be seen – only in Italy – on

• Digital terrestrial

• Satellite TV

• Internet

• Mobile phones.

Digital terrestrial

Mediaset offers most Serie A games at €5 per game. One must have the Mediaset Card, which costs €30, plus a digital decoder. For €79 one can see all the games of one’s ‘team of the heart’: all 19 home games and eight games from grounds where Mediaset can broadcast from. With Mediaset Premium one can see up to 171 games in the season for €99.

La7 began by offering the Cagliari, Palermo, Fiorentina, Lecce, Parma, Chievo and Reggina games but many of these clubs have since joined Mediaset. Each game costs €5 and one needs the La7 card on a pay as you view basis. Seeing all the games of one team costs E84 a season.

Satellite

Sky carries most of the Serie A big guns and costs €5.85 per game. One needs to have a satellite dish, a decoder and a monthly permit ranging from €22 for Mondo Sky to €26 monthly for Calcio Sky. This is state-of-the-art interactive TV: each game can be seen from different angles with up to 20 cameras in some grounds: it is the viewer who decides which camera he wants to watch the game on.

Internet

Rosso Alice (www.rossoalice.it), the portal of Telecom Italia, offers direct television links to most Serie A games through an ADSL link, costing just €2,50 per game, or three games for €5, or €36 for all games of one team or even all Serie A games of the whole season for €48.

Fastweb delivers all the games seen on Sky through the cable and costs €28 a month.

Mobile phone

Italy is very advanced as mobile phones go. Service provider 3 sends a 15 second clip every time a goal is scored, costing €0,30 and 0,60 for every Champions League goal. It also offers a 60-second videoclip with all the game’s highlights after each game, costing €1,20. All goals of one team can be had for €40 for a full season. And every Sunday one can watch five-minute highlights from all games for €2. Service provider Tim offers each goal for €0,75 and Vodafone can send each goal for €1,9 a game and two MMS – one at half-time and one at the end for €0,50.

And in Malta?

The only free live links to Italian Serie A for football fans in Malta one would think, is back to the time of the radio, as Tutto il Calcio Minuto per Minuto is still being broadcast.

There are however other ways, equally free.

The Internet is full of sites which report live football games blow by blow, and in words, not videoclips, updated every two minutes or so. One can find many such sites though they all seem to come from one source. The best is Kataweb (www.kataweb.it) with links to five or six games. Every newspaper has its own links, such as Corriere della Sera or La Repubblica. And every team’s Internet website has its own link.

But one can also see Italian football direct on Internet sites. When we tried the Rosso Alice site we described earlier, we got the reply that since our IP address was not in Italy, they could not provide us with the link. There are, we were told, means to get around that.

Yesterday we got to know about another site – www.calciolibero.com - on which we could follow the Tottenham – Chelsea game just two minutes after seeing the direct link on Melita Cable. The website promises direct links to the Italian games today, although there is a possibility the commentary will be in Chinese!

As for satellite connections some spoke of a possibility that Al Jazeera will be broadcasting one or two games from Italy this season, the problem of course being that that game may not be the one you want to watch.

The best option, if one decides to go the whole hog and does not want to depend on Multiplus, is to get a Sky digital package from a satellite shop. A satellite shop is offering the decoder, costing Lm125, the Mondo Sky package including Cinema, Sport and Calcio options costing Lm300 for a season and an Italian team TV costing Lm42 a year, all for Lm350 a year.