The missile-throwing at the San Siro was typical of an inherent problem in Italian football that stems from hardcore fans wielding too much power, writes James Richardson
Wednesday April 13, 2005
Anyone who's followed football in Italy will know that last night's events at the San Siro were no one-off. The throwing of flares and missiles at the pitch or the opposition fans are a regular feature at many Italian stadia.
The incidents aren't usually as dramatic as last night's, when Milan's Brazilian goalkeeper Dida was struck by a burning flare hurled from the upper tier, but on occasion they are. Remember referee Anders Frisk's bloodied face after he was hit by a coin thrown by Roma fans at the Stadio Olimpico last September? Or, three years ago, Inter fans' attempts to launch a burning scooter from the same Curva Nord that hosted last night's scenes?
The problem in Italy is simple, even if the solution isn't. The Curvas, the areas where the hardcore supporters go, are seen as Ultra territory and the police do not and will not enforce the law there. This was underlined again just last weekend when Lazio supporters at the Stadio Olimpico unveiled a giant banner boasting "Rome is Fascist" and happily waved Nazi flags throughout the game. Both acts are against the law in Italy, but no attempt was made to stop them.
I once asked an Italian policeman regularly assigned to stadium duty what the story was. He admitted that the police avoid entering Ultra territory for fear of provoking a riot. If they ever do go in (say, if English fans are present) then it's with full body armour and truncheons to crack some heads, but this is rare. Many in Italy feel the "English model" - numbered seats and club stewards backed by officers quietly identifying and removing troublemakers - is the solution; but to introduce it would mean ending the power of the Ultra groups, and that won't be easy.
Italian supporters' groups enjoy a level of influence on their clubs without parallel in top-flight football: they can dissuade a club from signing a player, as in the case of Ronnie Rosenthal to Udinese; conduct negotiations with a transfer target, like when the Lazio fans' infamous delegation travelled to the Parma training ground to try and talk Lilian Thuram into joining the Rome club (wonder why that one fell through?); they can enter locker rooms to "encourage" under-performing players (er, Lazio again); and, like last night, they can force games to be abandoned - remember the derby last year, when four Roma fans used an ill-founded rumour of police brutality to enter the pitch and convince captain Francesco Totti to stop the match? Yesterday, in frustration at their umpteenth defeat to Milan, it looked like a group of Inter fans were after a similar show of force, unveiling, even before the barrage began, a banner declaring "We Don't Care About the Match Anyway".
Will things ever change? Today's papers will be full of proposals to reign the Ultras back in, while politicos from Berlusconi down (or up) promise crackdowns and shake-ups. However, before a year is out they'll probably be doing it all over again for some other "Night of Shame".
The fact that this time it's one of Italy's big three clubs and under Uefa jurisdiction may make a difference, but don't bet on it. Way back in 1998, fans in Salerno went way better than these interisti when, during a Fiorentina-Grasshoppers Zurich Uefa Cup match [what, you ask, were Fiorentina doing playing down in Salerno? Serving a stadium ban in Florence, of course] they hit one of the match officials with a home-made bomb they'd smuggled into the ground. Uefa "cracked down" after that one, too, and just look how much effect that had.
and this
Trouble flares - again
Roberto Gotta
If you have a broken record, or a scratched CD for more modern times, put in on, and it will probably be more varied than the rest of this column. The thoughts that came to mind after the shameful ending of the all-Milano Champions League return tie on Tuesday night are the same that have been repeated over and over again by many commentators, myself included (see April 30 last year, after the Roma derby was abandoned), and that makes the whole matter even more discouraging.
So please bear with me if you've read this before. It can be frustrating, but only half as much as writing it over and over again. What is plain to most observers perhaps isn't to those inside the world of soccer; or maybe it is, but for some reason nothing or very little is done to counter the lethal assault of violence on Italian soccer. Or worse still, nothing seems to have an effect.
It was 1974 when the matter of football violence was brought to the attention of the general public in tragic fashion. There had been clashes between fans before, even when football had only been a few years old, and the atmosphere inside grounds had been getting increasingly worse, with political influences from both sides creeping in.
But when Lazio fan Vincenzo Paparelli was killed before a derby against Roma by a rocket that travelled the length of the pitch from the opposite 'curva' (end) a watershed was reached. Or at least it should have been. Go back to the newspapers of the time and you will read platitudes about things having reached breaking point; of how stricter measures had to be taken and more draconian laws drafted. Well, once the commotion waned, business got back to its usual ways. Flares were brought into arenas, coffins bearing the opposing team's name appeared in the hotter sections of the curvas and everyone felt more or less able to do what he or she wanted; the danger of being caught and actually being jailed slim.
If you happened inside a stadium one month or one year or ten years after Paparelli's death, you'd believe nothing had changed because, well, nothing actually had.
While in high school in the early Eighties, I got in touch with a fan of a Northern club - no names here, suffice it to say they were a Serie A side at the time but have virtually disappeared from the map now - and asked him to send me a couple of stickers of his fan group, as young, impressionable and stupid young people fascinated with the more outrageous aspects of fan culture are wont to do.
When I received them, in my naivety, I was shocked to see that the colours of that team were barely visible, hidden behind a political symbol which shall go unmentioned, as if football were only a means of spreading a message which had nothing to do with sport and much to do with something else.
This cancer of politics entering the football field hasn't let up since, and it is only as a consequence of increased media scrutiny - sometimes with hidden agendas depending on the type of newspaper you read - that this phenomenon is believed to be on the rise. It never went away; people just stopped noticing for a while so the feeling was it was doing just that.
“ It was only last weekend that 85 Policemen were hurt in crowd trouble throughout Italy - in Serie A, Serie B, C1, C2 and D matches - causing Home Secretary Giuseppe Pisanu to threaten the closure of certain stadiums with more notorious reputations. ”
Since the Paparelli tragedy, it's been almost impossible to keep track of the number of serious incidents, stemming from confrontations borne out of political tensions, local rivalries or any fictional reason plucked out of the air at that particular moment, that have occurred. Pitch invasions, ambushes of away fans, missile throwing and the ritual trashing of coaches and trains, coupled with another staple of fan misbehaviour, the looting of highway rest stops and cafes, are too numerous to chronicle.
Anyone who's ever wandered absent-mindedly into one of those places for a quick espresso at the wrong time will have horror stories to tell.
We could sit in vain all week and try to come up with a definitive solution to this age old problem, or pinpoint a social or psychological reason for it, but that's not the point, perhaps. Fans who misbehave usually say there's no way outsiders would understand their tribal mentality, but we're long past the stage of being picky about the minutiae and since the phenomenon shows no signs of stopping, it would be much more practical to think of a remedy; if there was one that did not imply drastic measures.
It was only last weekend that 85 Policemen were hurt in crowd trouble throughout Italy - in Serie A, Serie B, C1, C2 and D matches - causing Home Secretary Giuseppe Pisanu to threaten the closure of certain stadiums with more notorious reputations.
The Stadio Olimpico in Rome has got to be one of them; the sheer amount of trouble in the last couple of years alone has proved that. Things worsened last Sunday when Lazio-Livorno, a match that was always going to raise the hairs on the back of everybody's necks because of the opposing political ideas - a grossly exaggerated word, this - of the two sets of fans, turned into a display of banners that had little to do with football and common sense.
And please do not throw back the customary reply that it was only a minority of fans doing it, because this does not make it any more acceptable.
Neither does the revelation that five other offensive banners, 44 clubs and sticks, and 19 rockets had been seized by the Police during pre-match checks. This only shows some kind of control is actually enforced, but obviously not enough of it given the Nazi banners in the Lazio end and the hammer and sickles in the away section. Too many people can get away with anything they do because there is no way the Police would enforce the rules and, even when they do, when their own safety is under threat, you will always find some sympathetic judge sending you home with the Italian equivalent of a mild scolding, which usually goes in one ear and out the other with no discernible effect.
It does not help when those who could do something keep their collective heads in the sand, as a former big-club owner did a few years ago when he went on record as saying that his club had no violent following. As if it were his fault that some empty-heads were trashing everything in sight before and after away matches.
That man's words bring up the matter of the huge responsibility clubs have towards, and for, their fans. As readers will know by now, too many chairmen and directors have a direct liaison with the unruliest fans, providing funds for away travel - whether directly or under some guise - and it was with worry that I recently read West Bromwich Albion and other clubs abroad have started subsidising away travel for their fans, and were even praised for it.
If - a big if - they misbehave, are the club going to hold those privileges back? That the chances of Baggies fans doing serious damage are slim is not the point, of course. Once you establish this kind of relationship with some sections of the fans, you'd better set firm rules, and whoever breaks them must be kicked out with no ifs or buts. But what if you fear retribution at the next home match and you are afraid that those you booted out will try and have the game stopped in order to bring shame to your club again?
Once blackmail of this kind sets in, there's usually no way back. Tales of fans groups funding themselves by selling official club merchandise abound, and the habit of some ultra groups to have a say in how their side is run is notorious.
Only last month, twenty or so Brescia fans showed up at the clubs' out of town training ground one morning, confronted some players and, in the words of a news agency report, 'sent a clear message to coach Cavasin: play those who deserve it, pointing to striker Sculli', who according to their infinite wisdom 'never scores, but gives it all out there'. A bizarre statement if there ever was one.
Cavasin, of course, has used Sculli only sparingly, but this kind of mob-like behaviour, with ultras routinely gaining access to places where a regular fan looking for an autograph with a pen and paper would be thrown out, is another side of the cancer that has been eating at the core of Italian football for a while, at all levels.
Many readers abroad are fascinated by the colourful appearance of Italian terraces, with the huge banners, the flares, the drums and other silly stuff, but that misses the point. The Ultra groups may just be a fraction of a 40,000 crowd, and it would be grossly wrong to think their kind of behaviour is shared or tolerated by the other sections of the stadium, but too many people elsewhere in the arena still behave as if everyone is out to cheat them out of a deserved win, and their basic demeanour is an overly aggressive one.
“ Avoid those places altogether, and watch games on TV, that's the message that comes out of it, once you sum up the parts. ”
I will never forget how one day, a few years ago, I'd brought a book with me to pass time before a match of medium-to-low importance, the kind of late season game where a win means little for both teams and the fans can expect to enjoy a late spring afternoon in the sun. Still, a couple of perfectly sound refereeing decisions raised the temperature of the crowd and before long things were raining down on the athletics track... including, at one point, something that eerily resembled my book.
I checked under my seat and it wasn't there anymore: the guy next to me, in his uncontrolled rage, had bent over, picked it up and thrown it at the ref...
As I've probably written before, the sense of personal accountability seems to have gone forever from the game, and from large sections of society, in Italy. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi actually went on record as saying that the decision to allow Lazio to repay their huge debt to the Inland Revenue Service over the next - ready for it? - 23 years was taken in part because 'they have a lot of fans and their bankruptcy would have caused serious public unrest'.
Remember how I wrote there was no way Lazio or Roma would be punished for their financially irresponsible behaviour? You get the feeling that you can get away with anything, as long as you shout loudly enough and act as if you're the offended party instead of the offending one, or as long as someone will vouch for you.
Another example? Livorno fans, leaving Rome after that mess of a game at Lazio last Sunday, pulled the emergency brake on their train because - their words - 'we did not want to leave four (other reports have five) of our friends behind after they had been apprehended by the police'; who immediately arrived on the scene to restore order, and trouble duly erupted.
This led to six arrests and 248 Livorno fans reported for assault. How did they get back home, then? Livorno centre-forward Cristiano Lucarelli paid for three coaches to bring them back to the Tuscan city, no questions - allegedly - asked. Then you wonder why some fans - not only in Livorno, of course - find it so easy to get away with it, and resort to the age-old tactic of blaming the police for any trouble, mixing up the cause with the effect.
There is no geographical distinction when you analyse crowd trouble: it can happen anywhere. And it is particularly disappointing to see that some in Rome feel in some perverse kind of way vindicated by Tuesday's shameful scenes in the San Siro because they showed that crowds can cause trouble in Milano, too.
Hey, what a great piece of news. Weren't Inter - but it could have been Milan, Juve, or just about any other group - fans those who rolled a motor scooter down the third tier a few years back? How did they smuggle that huge thing in? And were Tuesday's flare-throwing incidents done with the added intention to force Inter owner Massimo Moratti to quit, as a conspiracy theory doing the rounds on Wednesday morning suggested?
If so, of course, you wonder why the conspirators had to wait until right after Cambiasso's disallowed goal 17 minutes from the end, but then again you could say the tie was already beyond repair for Inter at that time, so trouble would have erupted anyway. As you've probably heard or read before in this space, those same sections of the crowd who keep displaying banners criticising satellite TV giants Sky for - in their opinion - hijacking football as we knew it, are doing Sky the biggest of favours: making Italian stadia such a hostile environment for those with a peaceful disposition that they can only make one decision.
Avoid those places altogether, and watch games on TV, that's the message that comes out of it, once you sum up the parts.
Some clubs are trying to adopt the so-called 'English model' - a trendy couple of words in Italian football for some time - by proposing fenceless stadia, hoping that fans would behave once they're not kept inside cages or behind high fences. But the English model perhaps requires crowds with a speck of common sense, the absence of political agendas and a total ban on those stupid flares, fireworks, drums and smoke bombs that create an artificial atmosphere in Italian venues; so to say changing things will be difficult is an understatement.
And what a pity the horrendous, but in no way surprising or shocking, events of Tuesday night at the San Siro are again overshadowing some brilliant football being played on the pitch. The last round of Serie A matches saw a dazzling game between Fiorentina and Juventus - never mind some instances of amateurish defending and goalkeeping - and a couple of other truly enjoyable matches with box-to-box action.
You could say 'just concentrate on the football and forget the horrors that are being perpetrated on the terraces and in the corridors of power', but when scenes like Tuesday night's happen, can you really keep those two aspects apart?
Interview with James Richardson from the guardian and Roberto from Espn,
How worrying is it that ultras have that kind of acess to the team your throughtsOnly last month, twenty or so Brescia fans showed up at the clubs' out of town training ground one morning, confronted some players and, in the words of a news agency report, 'sent a clear message to coach Cavasin: play those who deserve it, pointing to striker Sculli', who according to their infinite wisdom 'never scores, but gives it all out there'. A bizarre statement if there ever was one.
