"catenaccio" - Word of the Day from the OED

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catenaccio, n.

DRAFT ENTRY June 2010

Association Football.

Brit. /katnat/, U.S. /ktnt(i)o/  [< Italian catenaccio (only recorded from 1963 in this sense in Italian dictionaries), spec. sense of catenaccio bolt (14th cent.) < catena chain + -accio (< classical Latin -ceus: see -ACEOUS suffix). The spec. use in Italian is apparently after French verrou bolt, formerly used in Switzerland to describe a similar system, developed in the 1930s; compare:
  1973 P. ARNOLD & C. DAVIS Hamlyn Bk. World Soccer 196/3 Before the Second World War, Switzerland..developed a system known as verrou, or ‘the bolt’... The Italian clubs..who took over ‘the bolt’ in the fifties..transformed it into the depressingly defensive catenaccio system.] 

    A defensive system of play, originating in Italy in the 1960s, in which each attacking player is marked by one defender, with an additional defender, or libero, as cover. Also in later use: any very defensive system of play, esp. one employing a libero. Cf. LIBERO n.

1961 Times 9 Nov. 3/1 For two-thirds of the second half they [sc. the Italian League football team] put up a masterly Catenaccio defence of seven and eight men funnelling back towards their penalty area. 1972 Football Monthly Aug. 32/2 The sheer obsolescence of the Italian form of catenaccio was cruelly shown up in Rotterdam. 1982 N.Y. Times (Nexis) 30 June B8/1 Eventually, catenaccio became more than a style of play, it became a mentality that dragged Italian soccer down. 2001 Independent on Sunday (Electronic ed.) 28 Oct., Kilmarnock may not be Juventus..but their passable catenaccio imitation seemed poised to bring reward until their time-wasting came back to haunt them.

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