That in a nutshell is Italy: “la solita minestra” (the same old soup), the same old song, the usual blah-blah-blah. I’m naturally talking about the umpteenth death on February 2nd of a police officer at the Catania-Palermo soccer derby (won 2-1 by Palermo). The absolutely INCREDIBLE irony of this match is that prior to the kick-off a minute of silence was observed in Catania’s stadium because on January 27th, a day put aside by the Italian government to remember the Holocaust, the manager of a boys’ amateur soccer team was (literally) kicked in the head in the dressing room. To death.
The Catania-Palermo match saw over 150 people injured, including 26 police officers and 4 Carabinieri officers. Another police officer is in serious condition. Catania’s hospitals apparently went into overdrive due to the incredible number of injured people that were arriving. In a sign of protest and disgust, the Italian FA has decided to suspend all matches of the Serie A scheduled for February 4th. Again, the same old soup: twelve years ago when Don Antonio Matarrese was the president of the Italian FA (he’s currently the president of the Italian League and was also a former FIFA Vice-President, one by the way despised by Trinidad’s Jack Warner!), a young fellow by the name of Vincenzo Spagnolo was knifed to death at the Marassi stadium in Genoa by AC Milan fans. Matarrese then chose the iron fist and suspended, for the first time in the history of Italian soccer, the championship on the following weekend. Twelve years later and with innumerable acts of violence in Italy’s stadia (Molotov cocktails too!), the scene has once again been repeated. The usual blah-blah-blah on what should be done will certainly now follow.
Looking at the scenes on tv you’d think that there was a mini “Intifada” which took place in Catania the other night: tear gas canisters launched by the hooligans and by the police, mini paper bombs exploding left and right (one apparently killed the officer as it was thrown into his police van), rocks being thrown, you name it, it was there. About the only thing that was missing was yet again another missile, like the one which had killed the Lazio fan Vincenzo Paparelli in 1979 during the Lazio-Roma derby in Rome. The missile was fired from the Roma supporters’ area, it crossed the entire LENGTH of the Olympic stadium and landed in poor Paparelli’s eye socket, killing him instantly (no doubt Al-Qaeda would have been proud of the Roma fan who fired it off!). This was how many years ago now, only 28? Have things changed much in 2007? Not really.
A few years ago in San Siro, one of the 10 “temples” of international soccer, thugs rolled up the stadium ramps a scooter. Once it was gutted they threw the thing from one tier down to the other one! Miraculously, no one was killed. The whole thing was caught on film and no doubt the scene was sent around the world (how on earth security staff DIDN’T notice a scooter being brought into the stadium during a soccer match is beyond me!). On another occasion I took in a Roma-Juventus fan in Rome. I went with the bro-in-law, a die-hard Juve fan. Our seats were next to the Juve hooligans (taken collectively they were pretty dangerous. Taken individually they were harmless). At half-time the rubbish started raining down on us. We were separated by the “praetorians”, the cops. As my bro-in-law stood up to see where the crap was coming from, bang!, he got nailed right in the sunglasses by a coin. I ended up having to drive him to 5 emergency wards (ever had an emergency in the summer on a Sunday in Rome?) in order to get the glass shrapnel pulled out of his eye (he didn’t lose the eye luckily). And naturally we missed the 2nd half of the match.
Now every politician, Tom, Dick and Luigi is going to jump on the “morality” band-wagon and is going to say—as they’ve said countless times in the past—that “we have to do something to stop this ludicrous violence”! Hard to do I’d say when it has to do with a nation, as Vladimir Putin said awhile ago, which has the mafia. Why? Because the extreme fringes of hooligans have been known to black-mail club presidents into giving them (for free) tickets, otherwise they’ll either abandon the matches or will destroy the stadia (in the Catania match, bathroom parts were ripped away from the walls and used as weaponry!).
A solution? Yes, give Maggie Thatcher some uppers and/or vitamins, get her out of retirement and make her learn Italian so that she can become Italy’s prime minister! Italy needs someone with balls, not the soccer kind mind you and not the usual clowns who govern Italians (and to think that Silvio Berlusconi’s other great hobby after politics just happens to be soccer as he’s the president of AC Milan! You’d think that violence at matches would hit him on a personal note). Under her (and later Tony Blair) the Conservative government said “basta”!, and basically cleaned up the problem of hooliganism in England (but not when the British fans travel abroad though, especially in countries like Italy where they no damn well that the laws are lax) so much so that protective barriers surrounding soccer pitches have been taken down. The same thing at the moment would be totally unthinkable in Italy.
Politics in Italy vis-à-vis soccer-related problems mirrors very much what goes on in Italy on a daily basis: Italy is quite often a “Banana Republic” when it comes to dealing with even more serious problems, such as the appalling conditions of many of its hospitals, especially in southern Italy (see below for my posting on that problem) or the incredibly rigid labour laws, especially when it comes to hiring people over the age of 35. Back in the 1980s the Craxi government had basically stopped dead in his tracks the terrorist Abu Abbas. He had been the master-mind behind the Achille Lauro ship high jacking. Some may recall that episode in which a Jewish-American invalid by the name of Leon Klinghoffer was shot by terrorists and thrown overboard in his wheelchair. Abbas was on a flight to Belgrade. His plane was intercepted and escorted to the military base of Sigonella in southern Italy. The Reagan government at the time wanted the Craxi government to stop him and hand him over to the American authorities. Craxi instead allowed the plane to fly on to Belgrade. Italian and American military personnel nearly came to fists over that incident, right on the airport’s tarmac. This naturally sent Reagan ballistic. I was in Canada following the situation at the time. I will never forget when two U.S. congressmen, watching appalled as the Italians let Abbas go freely, referred to Italy as a “Banana Republic”! Can one really blame them?
Ditto six years ago during the Genoa G8 Summit (I worked during that disastrous event). A Black Bloc protester by the name of Carlo Giuliani, a young punk, had a fire extinguisher held over his head. He was ready to smash it into a police van with inside another young Carabiniere officer. Obviously his intent was that of smashing the poor officer’s skull and not to put out his cigarette! The officer, simply terrified as his van was surrounded by these political hooligans, fired off a shot. Giuliani not only lay there dead but by Italy’s political left he was turned into a modern-day martyr and saint. The Carabiniere who fired the shot? Oh, he basically had his career ruined and was forced to leave his job. Protesters had not been too far away either from the “red zone” that day, the same zone which hosted the G8 leaders. Had they managed to enter that area all hell would have broken loose and the Berlusconi would have had on its hands a one MAJOR diplomatic problem. Again, Italy gave to the entire world one of the worst images of itself, not to mention a classical example of how “we-don’t-know-how-to-organize-a-major-event-without-making-a-complete-mess-out-of-things-even-if-our-very-own-lives-depended-on-it”!
Too harsh of an analysis? Just witness what goes on practically every weekend during soccer matches (and you’d think that the Italian government and soccer authorities were somewhat new to violence in stadia!!!). That’s just one of the reasons why I’ve stopped going for years now to see soccer matches live. The violence, the swearing and what not has simply become nauseating. I much prefer rugby matches were both the players and fans are more civilized! And I’m not the only one because with the advent of digital tv many soccer aficionados now watch soccer matches in the comfort and safety of their own homes, thus causing stadium attendance to dwindle dangerously low.
Do I personally have a solution as one who also studied the phenomenon of hooliganism for my master’s degree in the sociology of sports (the folks at the University of Leicester in England where I studied have quite often acted as consultants to the British government on resolving the problem of hooliganism in that country. They are experts on the subject)? Well, we can adopt the American law of “three strikes and you’re out” and throw the culprits in jail for 10 years or so, or we can hope and wait for the wisdom of someone who has known Italian soccer first-hand: UEFA’s new president, Michel Platini (who played for Juventus). Why Platini? Because Italy will be a candidate in 2012 for the European championship. What Platini should do with the other candidate countries (Croatia-Hungary and the Ukraine-Poland are also candidate cities) is the following: the countries which have so far done something against the problem of violence in stadia and have a lower rate of violence will be assigned the 2012 games. That’ll hit the Italian government, the FA and fans alike (the 2012 championship will also mean more funding in order to upgrade many of Italy’s stadia which are in terribly appalling conditions, even after having been upgraded 17 years ago for the 1990 World Cup!) right where it hurts them the most: in their pocketbooks as well as in their soccer pride!
With the police officer’s death at the Catania stadium, history once (sadly) repeats itself as litres and litres of (crocodile?) tears will again be shed over this umpteenth tragedy. And if all this doesn’t work seeing that everything has be tried so far (the president of the Italian players’ association has also suggested closing down the championship for an entire year), then we dig up both Stalin and Himmler and get them to head the Italian FA. I’m sure that you wouldn’t even hear a pin drop during the matches!
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