On three years of Italian football “trainspotting”…
Like many good Italian things, it all started in
Tuscany: a balmy, midweek late summer evening at the Stadio Artemio Franchi
(Montepaschi Arena) in Siena, and a Coppa Italia tie with Ternana. Aesthetically,
the Artemio Franchi itself is nothing to write home about – three sides are
temporary constructions – but the setting is one of the most beautiful I have
ever watched sport in. Lying at the bottom of a tree-lined gulley, framed by
views of the Duomo and Basilica Cateriniana di San Domenico at the top of the
hill, special doesn’t do it justice, especially for a game at sunset in August.
And it was only €2 to get in.
Stadio Artemio Franchi (Montepaschi Arena), Siena
Many of my friends probably suspected my decision
to move to Italy for a few years was motivated to a large degree by my love of Italian
football and desire for access to a rich seam of new grounds to tick off. To a
large degree, they are probably right. My interest in the country, like many of
my generation, was piqued by the Italia
’90 World Cup, and subsequently Channel 4’s coverage of Serie A from 1992.
The Italian football landscape I wandered into in
2010, however, was one blighted by corruption; the embers of Calciopoli barely having a chance to
stop smouldering before Calcioscommese ignited.
My 2010/11 season ended on a particularly sour note as I was present at the
infamous AlbinoLeffe v Siena fixed game, which earned current Juventus head
coach Antonio Conte a 9-month ban for his colluding part. There was also the supporter
unrest triggered by the introduction of the Tessera
del Tifoso. This ID card essentially compelled fans to record themselves on
a police database just to be able to buy tickets to watch their team, and
understandable caused uproar among the more passionate elements. I wrote a
couple of pieces for When Saturday Comes on
this* at the time so don’t want to get into it here, but suffice to say it cast
a shadow over the period and occasionally affected my ability to get in to
games.
So, back to Tuscany. I had barely a month of the
season in the region, but managed to get in six grounds, and some wonderful
games in predictably glorious weather. Possibly because of this and the fact it
was my first residence in the country, some of my best football memories are
from this short period. I will, for instance, never forget the passionate and
unwavering support of the 30-odd L’Aquila ultras
at Prato. Despite being baked in 34° heat, and their team being baked 3-0 on
the pitch, they never let up for a minute. I had seen my “Channel 4
team” AC Milan both home and away on previous trips to Italy, but this was my first
experience of the frenzied type of support any British fan of calcio hopes to witness.
Red Blue Eagles, L'Aquila ultras
The heat could actually be a bit of an issue at
times. Those fascist era roofless concrete bowl stadiums that trap and intensify the heat are really not the
most sensible design for a country where it does tend to get a bit warm. Poggibonsi and Viareggio, two more grounds oddly tucked
away in pine woods, were notable examples of this. How the old guy with the
walrus-like moustache roused himself to lead the Viareggio chanting as they
closed out their victory over Virtus Lanciano, I will never know. I was ready
to pass out.
From here it was something of a shock to the
system to hit the cold and damp north following my move to Milan. If I thought I
was leaving all possible beautiful viewing locations behind in Tuscany, I was
wrong. Lecco’s Stadio Rigamonti-Ceppi,
painted almost entirely in vivid sky blue and yellow inside and surrounded by
mountains, is really something to see. Their ultras Gruppo Psycho with their Homer Simpson x-ray logo are highly
entertaining too. I found another true oddity on a trip to see one of the most
famous old names of Italian football, Pro Vercelli – trees being allowed to
happily continue growing inside the ground. You wouldn’t get that in the
Premier League.
It’s not that I was only trawling the lower
leagues for my football fix though. A significant driver of my desire to live
in Milan was to fulfill something of a dream to be a regular attendee at San
Siro. On this front, I struck gold, as AC Milan won their first championship
for a while in my first season there. Along the way I got to see my first
Champions League game, and most gloriously, the derby. The time, effort and
money that goes into the ultras’ pre-match displays at these events is
unimaginable. The results are truly spectacular, and in most other contexts
would be considered genuine works of art or artistic expression. At the
Juventus game that season, I even got to be in the middle of one. As much fun
and enjoyment I got out of the small games, ultimately this was why I was really out there.
Getting heated at the Milan derby
Frustrated by the über-zealous security
arrangements in the professional leagues associated with the Tessera del Tifoso (nobody should ever
need THREE attempts to get in to see Pro Patria), I found myself slipping further down the tree and investigating
non-league. Serie D, like in England the highest level of non-league being the fifth
tier of the overall structure, was a
particularly happy hunting ground. Also as in England, you find a number of
ex-league clubs fallen on hard times, and with entry prices never usually more
than a tenner and no ID required, it can be a more enjoyable experience than going
to games in the Lega Pro (equivalent of English Leagues One and Two). My geographically
most local club Pro Sesto were stuck down there after a brush with bankruptcy,
and provided a nice easy afternoon out when I lacked the motivation to venture
further afield.
My Italian football odyssey ended in 2013 on a
suitably high note as I met my friend Matt, a fellow obsessive of the Channel 4
generation, in Rome for the final of the Coppa Italia. Not only a cup final, but
a Rome derby to boot. Arriving in the area of the stadium a good four hours
before kickoff, we found a wild street party already underway. Distress flares, smoke bombs,
stun grenades; a passerby would have thought that Lazio had already won. Or
that war had broken out. As it happened Lazio did win, and celebrated with
ultras on the pitch and a live eagle being paraded with the cup. The oddities
it seems do make it to the top level after all.
Those three years living in Italy contained as
many high and low points as you would expect from a period living abroad, and
were well reflected by my experiences with Italian football. There were
certainly lows: being locked out of several games due to the ludicrous bureaucracy,
the afternoons in murderous heat or brutal cold and rain when I doubted my
sanity, some unnecessarily epic journeys on the idiosyncratic railway network.
But the memorable moments always made up for it: the sound of a massive stadium
falling utterly silent in an instant as Napoli’s did when Torino equalised with
the last kick of the game, the entire Pro Vercelli team swallow-diving into a
giant pool of standing water on a barely playable pitch, an aged Seregno club
official getting into a physical fight requiring police intervention after instructing
the ballboys to waste time during a relegation play-off. It may have its
defects, but ultimately it is still the beautiful game. Fino alla fine, forza
ragazzi.
National anthem and pre-match displays by the Roma and Lazio ultras before the Coppa Italia final
The Spectre in Italy - grounds visited:
Atalanta
Brescia
Caronnese
Chievo Verona
Como
Cremonese
Empoli
Fiorentina
Lecco
Monza
Napoli
Novara
Pergocrema
Pizzighetonne
Poggibonsi
Pontisola
Prato
Pro Patria
Pro Sesto
Pro Vercelli
Real Milano
Renate
Rondo Dinamo
San Siro (AC Milan and Internazionale)
Sandonatese
Seregno
Siena
Solbiatese
Stadio Olimpico (Roma and Lazio)
Torino
Varese
Viareggio
No comments:
Post a Comment