Italians have a tendency to hate/compare themselve to the French.

For example: Italy scores very badly in some rankings. The first thing an Italian would do is to check if France is higher or lower than Italy. If it’s lower, they’d say “at least we beat the french”. If it’s higher they’d say “damn we even scored worse than France… terrible”.

But I don’t think people actually hate france or the french. it’s more like a meme I think!