Snippets from the Italian Scene
Soccer Madness
We are now (Jun 1999) in the US, in part to take care of family business and in part to give son Riccardo an opportunity to play with American children and thus soak up some English. He's much taken by American sports, especially baseball, which is quite a change of pace from the Italian national game, soccer. Watching the games on TV with him, I am again struck by how different sports are in the US and Italy. In the US going to a game is a family event, with fans mingling in the stands. In Italy, by contrast, the stadiums where the top teams (A and B League) play are fortified, with Plexiglas barriers to separate the fans of the opposing teams, high fences to keep the fans from invading the field, and lots of police in full riot gear. They're not there for show either; the streets around stadiums become battle zones when the major rivals come to town. Nor is the violence limited to the area around the stadium: Salerno's team organized a special fan train for the crucial last game of the season, which they lost, thus dropping to B-League. The fans trashed all the stations where the train stopped on the way home. Since they knew the police would be at Salerno's station to greet them, they decided to create a diversion and set fire to the train in a tunnel a mile from the station. Four teenage fans died. This sort of thing doesn't happen every week, but it shouldn't happen at all.
And what does it mean if you're traveling in Italy during the soccer season (Sep-Jun)? Simply that you should ask who the local team will be playing on Sunday, and what sort of fans to expect if it's a home game. If it's the archrival avoid the area near the stadium (usually not a problem, because stadiums are generally on the outskirts of town) and the main train station. If there's no animosity between the teams, on the other hand, consider buying tickets if you like soccer, especially if you're in a city with an A-league team (e.g. Florence or Rome). The Italian playing style is extremely technical and the players are the best in the world -- it's like watching the NBA if you like basketball.
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