London: A survey carried out by Internet search engine Google has revealed that, reversing the trend prevalent in the rest of the world, Italians are more interested in football than sharing bed with their partners.

In fact, the participants searched for football twice as often as for sex , according to the results. "Our kids are simpler than their parents. They understand perfectly that a football derby, if you do not watch it, is an event that is lost forever.

Love, however, is something you can do whenever," Stefano Zecchi, a commentator for the Il Giornale newspaper, told The Daily Telegraph . Google has also revealed what the preoccupations of Italy's major cities are, highlighting the most-searched phrase per region.

In Naples, sport was the top, while in Bergamo there was a thirst for gossip . However, the educated northern city of Turin, searched mainly for books while Florentines entered exhibitions .

The poll came a month after a survey by another portal had revealed that "British women prefer being online to having sex" with their partners. In the poll of women's preferred leisure pursuits, one in five women had said they favoured being online over reading (18 per cent), socialising with friends (16 per cent) and watching TV (11 per cent).

And only seven per cent of respondents had selected sex as their favourite pastime -- on par with listening to their favourite music. The survey -- by online gamer Zylom.com -- had also revealed that "79 per cent of British women play games and puzzles online -- overtaking men and over half of them (56 per cent) play for over eight hours a week compared to 43 per cent of men".

Source : PTI