The Italians have ideas above their station when it comes to their cuisine. Essentially they have two dishes - cheese on toast and pasta (usually with cheese). However, when you go to one of their restaurants you are confronted with a menu of about 200+ items. Delving deeper, though, you find these are really not very imaginative variations on two basic dishes - cheese on toast and pasta (usually with cheese).
Pizzas are just cheese on a not very appetizing slab of bread, with a few extras on top. In recent years certainly in the UK, the bread has transformed from being a thin base designed simply to carry the topping to become a thick, doughy pap which, if presented alone, would be rapidly consigned to the dustbin.
The multitude of varieties of pasta are simply concoctions of flour and water formed into different shapes. They are all the same, they all taste the same, and apart from the odd varieties which have a hint of colour, they are the same. Many of them are of ridiculous design being virtually impossible to handle. Spaghetti, for example, should be manufactured and served in one inch lengths. To serve it in lengths of a foot or more is simply ridiculous.
Having said that I hope, with or without their spaghetti or pizza, that the Italians are victorious on Saturday night thus hastening the end, in England at least, of the ridiculous hype that has surrounded the latest tedious competition involving "the beautiful game".