For security reasons, the Italian national soccer team has chosen a prep school and a small, isolated hotel in New Jersey for its base camp during next summer's World Cup. It's not terrorists that the Italians want to be protected against, it's their own fans.

Local organizers offered Princeton and Rutgers universities as training sites, among others, and the New York City area offers some of the world's most lavish hotels. No thanks, the Italians said. They chose instead to train at The Pingry School in Martinsville, N.J., and took all 110 rooms at the Somerset Hills Hotel in Warren, setting up camp some 45 minutes from Giants Stadium, where the Azzurri, as they are called, will play two first-round games.

Arrigo Sacchi, coach of the Italian national team, wanted a small hotel that would be secluded from obsessive fans -- both those who live in the New York area and those who will travel to the World Cup from abroad. At home, the Italian fans are known as tifosi, or carriers of typhoid, for their feverish support of the Azzurri. And the Food's Good, Too

"He felt they would be inundated with autograph seekers, and that fans would check into the hotel just to be near their heroes," Charlie Stillitano, director of the Giants Stadium venue, said of Sacchi. "They got what they wanted -- privacy, security and a small, charming hotel with an Italian chef."