Italy to win the World Cup? Quite possibly. The bookmakers have the Italians up among the favorites, with only Brazil, England, and Germany ahead of them.The Italians’ remarkable record in the World Cup – they have won it three times and lost in the final twice – is bettered only by Brazil and Germany. It has always been a tempestuous record, with a background rich with conspiracy theories and some very public dramatics.

Typical was the 1962 campaign in Chile, when an Italian journalist wrote derogatory remarks about the standard of living in Chile. The luck of the draw then put Italy in the same group as Chile, and the subsequent game degenerated into a free-for-all. Italy lost the game and was eliminated from the tournament. It was much worse four years later, when Italy was eliminated by North Korea. The Italian team flew back to Genoa airport to find 600 fans yelling abuse and throwing rotten fruit at them.

In 1982, after coach Enzo Bearzot included Paolo Rossi – who had only just completed a two-year suspension for game-fixing – on the roster, the Italian team refused to speak to the press. But Italy won the 1982 tournament – the last time it triumphed.

At the most recent World Cup, Italy was eliminated by the Koreans – South Korea this time.The Italians played well, and had real cause to feel aggrieved: In the four games they played, they had no fewer than five goals annulled – with replays indicating that four of the goals were legitimate.

“No other team in the entire history of the World Cup has suffered so many injustices,” proclaimed Corriere dello Sport, while Italian fans managed to overload FIFA’s website with an estimated 400,000 protesting e-mails.

Controversy, it seems, has always swirled around the azzurri – the blues, as they are called, after their shirt color. Which makes the current team’s growing strength so unusual, for it has been accomplished without the usual crises. A smooth passage through the qualifying round left little room for overheated arguments about player selection or whether coach Marcello Lippi should be ditched. Unlikely as it seems, the Italians have been preparing for the World Cup quietly.

But apart from the unusual calm surrounding the azzurri, it is business as usual for Italian soccer.Which means tumult. Or much, much worse, in the words of Sergio Campana, head of the Italian players’ union, who spoke over the weekend of the ” …barbarity, intolerance, and stupid violence fueled by the hysteria that surrounds football in Italy.”

Campana was referring to an incident that occurred early Sunday morning at Milan’s Malpensa airport. The players of Inter Milan, returning from an Italian league game (a 2-1 win at Ascoli), were abused by some 50 fans who had been waiting for them. The fans were unhappy that Inter had been knocked out of the European Champions League last week by the unfancied Spanish club Villarreal.

Insults were yelled at the players, but things took an uglier turn when a small number of fans followed some players into the parking lot and punched and kicked them.The quick arrival of the police averted any serious injuries.

The attack involved the players of one of Italy’s most famous clubs. Was it an isolated incident? No,said Campana in a radio interview: “We’re talking about this now because the victims are players at Inter. But the outbreaks of violence are frequent, above all in Serie C (Italy’s third division) … Attacks outside the stadiums, in the locker rooms, buses stopped as they come back from away matches, cars vandalized, threatening telephone calls at home.”

Campana’s attempt to indicate that the problem is widespread is unlikely to divert attention from Inter’s fans, who have a long record of behaving badly. An earlier example of Inter fans attacking their own players came in 2000 when a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the team’s bus.

Last year, with Inter in the process of losing a Champions league game to AC Milan at San Siro (which serves as the home stadium for both Milan clubs), Inter fans made play impossible by raining flares and firecrackers down onto the field. The game was abandoned, and Inter – held responsible for the behavior of its fans – was ordered to play its next four Champions League games in empty stadiums.

That costly ban ended on March 29, when Inter hosted Villarreal. But a 2-1 win in that game was followed by a 0-1 defeat at Villarreal.That was the result that led to the latest fan violence, for it meant an aggregate score of 2-2 and victory for Villarreal by way of a crucial away goal scored at San Siro in the first leg.

Poor Inter. Through no fault of its own, it is also in trouble with the Vatican. Cardinal Ersilio Tonini has let it be known that the church is highly displeased at the decision by the Italian soccer federation to play the AC Milan vs. Inter-Milan league game – always a potentially explosive matchup – on Good Friday. “The insensibility of the soccer world is discouraging,” the Cardinal told the sports daily Gazzetta dello Sport,”There is no justification for this choice.”

Alas, the Cardinal knows little of the moves and tricks of European soccer.The Italian soccer federation has what it considers a good reason for advancing the game from Saturday to Friday.AC Milan, unlike Inter, is still alive in the Champions League. Its semifinal opponent, Barcelona, had already shifted its weekend game in the Spanish league to Good Friday – giving it an extra day’s rest before the following Tuesday’s clash.

“We could not give Barcelona a one day advantage,” said Adriano Galliani, the league president. Perfectly straightforward, then. Except that the decision provides fuel for the conspiracy theorists. The majority of Italian soccer fans firmly believe that the Federation routinely gives big clubs like AC Milan breaks that smaller clubs could never expect.League president Galliani, you should know, is also the vice president of AC Milan.

pgardner@nysun.com