a4l
4-15-05, 10:57 PM
I came across the following article on the CBC website. It is a real eye opener. I am not going to be so naive as to point a finger at Italy and claim that they are the worst fan ever, after all I come from the home of the original football hooligans.
I think it is about time that FIFA, UEFA, and every other FAto take serious action against hooliganism. This has been going on for far too long and is once again ruining the game for others.
link to article by JOHN F. MOLINARO (http://www.cbc.ca/sports/columns/analysis/molinaro/#letters)
The dark heart of Italian soccer
CBC Sports Online
North American newspapers and sports commentators were aghast at the vile images of hooliganism that marred this past Tuesday's Champions League quarter-final soccer match between AC Milan and Inter Milan in Italy.
Dida
Unfortunately, those of us who regularly watch Italian soccer have become anaesthetized to such scenes of fan violence because the Milan incident was just another example of the "beautiful game" being hijacked by the ultras: organized groups of hardcore fans - common to most Italian teams - that have become infamous for wreaking havoc in the stands.
In case you missed it, the game took an ugly turn in the 73rd minute when a lit flare tossed from the stands by an Inter Milan ultra hit AC Milan goalkeeper Dida squarely on his right shoulder and sent him crashing to the ground.
Not happy with simply maiming Dida, the Inter Milan ultras continued their spree of recklessness and stupidity by littering the field with flares, bottles and other projectiles, forcing the game to be suspended.
Far from being an isolated event, the Milan debacle still serves as a stunning indictment of soccer in Italy, confirmation that hooliganism, once automatically associated with English supporters, has now become inextricably linked with Italian fans.
Calcio, the Italian word for soccer, is the king of sports in il paese bello (the beautiful country), but thanks to the ultras, the public face of the game - not to mention that of Italy itself - has been dealt a series of damning black eyes over the years:
* In 1999, S.S. Lazio played city rivals AS Roma, a team widely supported by Rome's significant Jewish population. Lazio's ultras took anti-Semitism to sickening heights when they unfurled a 50-metre banner around their section of Rome's Olympic Stadium that read: 'Auschwitz is your town, the ovens are your houses.'
* In May 2001, Inter Milan ultras stole a motor scooter, set it on fire and hurled it onto the field from the second level of Milan's Giuseppe Meazza Stadium.
* Last September, AS Roma's home game against Ukrainian side Dynamo Kiev in the Champions League was halted when referee Anders Frisk was bloodied after being hit by a metal object thrown from the stands.
* This past weekend, 17 fans were arrested and 259 later identified and charged with throwing objects onto the field, committing acts of violence in the stands, chanting fascist slogans and waving neo-Nazi banners following games in Rome, Palermo, Udine, Cava dei Tirreni and Perugia.
* Prior to this past Wednesday's Champions League quarter-final contest between Juventus and Liverpool, police in Turin clashed with Juventus supporters hell-bent on getting even with the English fans. In 1985, 39 Juventus fans died in a riot started by Liverpool supporters prior to the European Cup final in Brussels.
On Thursday, in the aftermath of a trying few days for Italian soccer, AC Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi, who also occupies his days as Italy's Prime Minister, took prompt action: his Forza Italia party immediately backed a series of new "zero tolerance" measures designed to combat fan violence at soccer matches.
Effective immediately, games will be abandoned if objects are thrown from the stands and the team whose fans threw the objects will be penalized with an automatic 3-0 loss.
Berlusconi's efforts, while laudable, are nevertheless short-sighted and pretty toothless because they don't address the obvious issue: keeping the ultras out of the stadiums in the first place.
In an interview with CBC Sports Online last September, Paddy Agnew, Rome correspondent for the Irish Times, said many Italian teams are at the mercy of the ultras.
"You can not underestimate the influence that the ultras yield over clubs," explained Agnew, who has lived and worked in Italy since 1985.
"It is not uncommon for the ultras to hold the clubs up for ransom: they'll demand the clubs give them free match tickets and buses to transport them to away games. If the club doesn't provide them with these things, the ultras threaten to go to the games on their own and run riot in the town centre, start scuffles in the stands and attack opposing fans.
"It's a very effective form of blackmail that the ultras have no shame in using."
Not only do clubs let these thugs become season-ticket holders, Agnew also explained that teams allow the ultras to operate in the curva (the end sections of the stadium they have marked out as their own) free from scrutiny.
"Police and security figures keep an eye on the ultras, but rarely go into their section to confront them when they throw stuff onto the field, brandish fascist signs or begin racist chants," said Agnew.
Lazio ultras
"Only when the ultras are a threat to other fans in the stadium does security even think about taking action against them."
All fans are officially barred from bringing in flares and racist banners into Italian stadiums, but the ultras are somehow above the law.
"How else do you explain the ultras bringing massive banners with swastikas and neo-Nazi symbols into the stadium? How else do you explain ultras being allowed to serenade black players with monkey chants? Or being allowed to throw objects onto the field? It's madness," said Agnew.
Several ultra groups have even been known to infiltrate a team's training facility days before a big game to bully the coach into making changes to his starting lineup, or threaten players who have played poorly. Some ultras have even used a similar tactic to dissuade teams from signing black players.
Agnew said clubs could easily identify members of ultra groups (the majority of Italian stadiums are equipped with close-circuit cameras) and expel them, but choose not to.
"They know exactly who the ultras are, but the clubs lack the strength and will to do anything about it."
There are, of course, a slew of social, political and economic factors that explain why the ultras act in the depraved manner that they do, but focusing on these reasons misses the point entirely - closer scrutiny should be paid to the conspiracy of spineless inaction by Italian clubs, the game's governing body, and the police.
It would also be grossly unjust to paint all Italian fans with the same brush; the ultras make up a fraction of the crowd in Italy's stadiums each weekend and their disgusting actions and attitudes are not shared by other fans.
That said, the ultras remain the scourge of Italian soccer, a cancerous tumour that can only be treated when the game's officials get serious about dealing with it.
Instead of turning a blind eye, Italian soccer needs to pull its head out of the sand and wield its collective boot to kick the ultras out of stadiums once and for all.
I think it is about time that FIFA, UEFA, and every other FAto take serious action against hooliganism. This has been going on for far too long and is once again ruining the game for others.
link to article by JOHN F. MOLINARO (http://www.cbc.ca/sports/columns/analysis/molinaro/#letters)
The dark heart of Italian soccer
CBC Sports Online
North American newspapers and sports commentators were aghast at the vile images of hooliganism that marred this past Tuesday's Champions League quarter-final soccer match between AC Milan and Inter Milan in Italy.
Dida
Unfortunately, those of us who regularly watch Italian soccer have become anaesthetized to such scenes of fan violence because the Milan incident was just another example of the "beautiful game" being hijacked by the ultras: organized groups of hardcore fans - common to most Italian teams - that have become infamous for wreaking havoc in the stands.
In case you missed it, the game took an ugly turn in the 73rd minute when a lit flare tossed from the stands by an Inter Milan ultra hit AC Milan goalkeeper Dida squarely on his right shoulder and sent him crashing to the ground.
Not happy with simply maiming Dida, the Inter Milan ultras continued their spree of recklessness and stupidity by littering the field with flares, bottles and other projectiles, forcing the game to be suspended.
Far from being an isolated event, the Milan debacle still serves as a stunning indictment of soccer in Italy, confirmation that hooliganism, once automatically associated with English supporters, has now become inextricably linked with Italian fans.
Calcio, the Italian word for soccer, is the king of sports in il paese bello (the beautiful country), but thanks to the ultras, the public face of the game - not to mention that of Italy itself - has been dealt a series of damning black eyes over the years:
* In 1999, S.S. Lazio played city rivals AS Roma, a team widely supported by Rome's significant Jewish population. Lazio's ultras took anti-Semitism to sickening heights when they unfurled a 50-metre banner around their section of Rome's Olympic Stadium that read: 'Auschwitz is your town, the ovens are your houses.'
* In May 2001, Inter Milan ultras stole a motor scooter, set it on fire and hurled it onto the field from the second level of Milan's Giuseppe Meazza Stadium.
* Last September, AS Roma's home game against Ukrainian side Dynamo Kiev in the Champions League was halted when referee Anders Frisk was bloodied after being hit by a metal object thrown from the stands.
* This past weekend, 17 fans were arrested and 259 later identified and charged with throwing objects onto the field, committing acts of violence in the stands, chanting fascist slogans and waving neo-Nazi banners following games in Rome, Palermo, Udine, Cava dei Tirreni and Perugia.
* Prior to this past Wednesday's Champions League quarter-final contest between Juventus and Liverpool, police in Turin clashed with Juventus supporters hell-bent on getting even with the English fans. In 1985, 39 Juventus fans died in a riot started by Liverpool supporters prior to the European Cup final in Brussels.
On Thursday, in the aftermath of a trying few days for Italian soccer, AC Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi, who also occupies his days as Italy's Prime Minister, took prompt action: his Forza Italia party immediately backed a series of new "zero tolerance" measures designed to combat fan violence at soccer matches.
Effective immediately, games will be abandoned if objects are thrown from the stands and the team whose fans threw the objects will be penalized with an automatic 3-0 loss.
Berlusconi's efforts, while laudable, are nevertheless short-sighted and pretty toothless because they don't address the obvious issue: keeping the ultras out of the stadiums in the first place.
In an interview with CBC Sports Online last September, Paddy Agnew, Rome correspondent for the Irish Times, said many Italian teams are at the mercy of the ultras.
"You can not underestimate the influence that the ultras yield over clubs," explained Agnew, who has lived and worked in Italy since 1985.
"It is not uncommon for the ultras to hold the clubs up for ransom: they'll demand the clubs give them free match tickets and buses to transport them to away games. If the club doesn't provide them with these things, the ultras threaten to go to the games on their own and run riot in the town centre, start scuffles in the stands and attack opposing fans.
"It's a very effective form of blackmail that the ultras have no shame in using."
Not only do clubs let these thugs become season-ticket holders, Agnew also explained that teams allow the ultras to operate in the curva (the end sections of the stadium they have marked out as their own) free from scrutiny.
"Police and security figures keep an eye on the ultras, but rarely go into their section to confront them when they throw stuff onto the field, brandish fascist signs or begin racist chants," said Agnew.
Lazio ultras
"Only when the ultras are a threat to other fans in the stadium does security even think about taking action against them."
All fans are officially barred from bringing in flares and racist banners into Italian stadiums, but the ultras are somehow above the law.
"How else do you explain the ultras bringing massive banners with swastikas and neo-Nazi symbols into the stadium? How else do you explain ultras being allowed to serenade black players with monkey chants? Or being allowed to throw objects onto the field? It's madness," said Agnew.
Several ultra groups have even been known to infiltrate a team's training facility days before a big game to bully the coach into making changes to his starting lineup, or threaten players who have played poorly. Some ultras have even used a similar tactic to dissuade teams from signing black players.
Agnew said clubs could easily identify members of ultra groups (the majority of Italian stadiums are equipped with close-circuit cameras) and expel them, but choose not to.
"They know exactly who the ultras are, but the clubs lack the strength and will to do anything about it."
There are, of course, a slew of social, political and economic factors that explain why the ultras act in the depraved manner that they do, but focusing on these reasons misses the point entirely - closer scrutiny should be paid to the conspiracy of spineless inaction by Italian clubs, the game's governing body, and the police.
It would also be grossly unjust to paint all Italian fans with the same brush; the ultras make up a fraction of the crowd in Italy's stadiums each weekend and their disgusting actions and attitudes are not shared by other fans.
That said, the ultras remain the scourge of Italian soccer, a cancerous tumour that can only be treated when the game's officials get serious about dealing with it.
Instead of turning a blind eye, Italian soccer needs to pull its head out of the sand and wield its collective boot to kick the ultras out of stadiums once and for all.