Just realised how many Argentina players have dual citizenship with Italy.
Nocioni, Delfino, Manu, Prigioni, Hernan Jansen all have Italian citizenship.
Interesting.
Yes, and,
Scola is Italian.
Campazzo is Italian.
JP Gutierrez is Spanish.
Kammerichs is German.
Lieva is Italian.
Mata is Spanish.
L. Gutierrez is Spanish.
This is how it has always been with Argentina's national team. It's always been made up of European 2nd and 3rd generation "Argentines".
In fact, it's been 75% to 80% made up of Italians pretty much forever.
It should be pretty obvious.
1. Most people in Argentina are Italian/German.
2. They have so many "Argentine" athletes with dual citizenship because they come from all the immigrants that fled Germany and Italy in the 30s and 40s. Thus, they are eligible for citizenship.
3. Just look at the freaking names of the players..
Prigioni, Scola, Nocioni, Delfino, Ginobili....
Oberto was also Italian, etc.....
I mean, it does not get any more Italian than those names. Those names are as Italian as Italian can be.
It's odd though that for some reason, NBA fans don't even have the slightest clue that they are all Italians, even though they have blatantly Italian names and speak Italian.