Hated and Proud- Ultras Contra Modernity

by Mark Dyal

  The concept itself began as a critique of the industrialization of soccer in the late-1990s, as the Ultras feared that the game was becoming a malleable form of entertainment rather than a deeply ingrained manifestation of local cultures. Similarly, they feared that the game was becoming a nexus of multinational corporations that would reduce it to a vehicle for selling advertising.58

  As their fears began to be realized, opposition to Calcio Moderno became a counter-ideology to globalization. The Ultras believe that television audiences and the revenues generated by advertising are more highly valued by clubs than local fan support; and that fans are now understood merely as consumers. Indeed, American-style merchandising is openly touted by FIFA and UEFA as a progressive generator of income for the clubs under their jurisdiction. While the sporting aspects of Calcio Moderno are worrying enough for the Ultras — including the creation of worldwide fan bases and the power of television executives to determine game times — it is more so the sterilization and standardization promoted by Calcio Moderno on which the Ultras have declared war.59

  This aspect of the discourse of Calcio Moderno, and even globalization, is perhaps the most active but also most elusive. The Ultras declare themselves non omologati (non-standardized) and seek to negate what they see as the encroachment of a foreign, corporate friendly morality of inclusion, tolerance (of racial, sexual, ethnic difference), and multiculturalism. While the Italian media attacks the Ultras for existing beyond the bounds of this morality, the Ultras counter-attack by accusing the media of attacking them only because they are beyond bourgeois liberal morality.

  Figure 5. ‘No to Modern Soccer,’ the basis of an ethical life, 2007.

  The idea of protecting the game and those with whom it is entwined (the Ultras themselves) from processes of globalization and liberalization is an important aspect of Ultra life. Calcio Moderno motivates behaviors that center on protecting the sport from forces that would divorce it from its local particularities. And, because the sport, clubs, and cities in which they take place are conflated within Ultra thought, I argue that their behaviors, by extension, are designed to protect their cities from the destructive standardization of globalization.

  Conclusion

  Even from this introduction to the theoretical and philosophical assumptions at the heart of this book, it should be clear that the Ultras are far more than mere soccer fans or hooligans, and that they offer men and women on the extreme edges of liberal modernity an example of the great potentials for a non-bourgeois life open to each of us. Thus, this book will ultimately have more in common with surveys of political extremism, extreme political ideologies and counter-modernity, the imposition of globalization upon indigenous populations, and the rise of a Western television-based monoculture, than with studies of sports spectators. That being said, however, it is hoped that men and women who only wish to support their soccer team of choice will take some of the extremism herein to heart, and make something beautiful, violent, and derelict of their fandom.

  Chapter Two

  The Everyday Life of the Ultras

  In the coming chapters, the most important elements of the Ultras will come into focus, including their relationships with violence, Fascism, and Counter-Enlightenment political philosophy. This chapter will instead present the more mundane aspects of the Ultra experience: namely, the game-attending experiences. Based on what we already know of the Ultras and their in-stadium behaviors, it might seem incongruous to describe game attendance as mundane. But, given the unpredictability of so much of the beyond-the-stadium life of the Ultras — the involvement of soccer-and-State-related authorities in their activities and the extreme nature of their political activities — going to a game often appears as the most normal activity in their lives.

  The chapter will be divided between Ultra experiences before, during, and after games away from Rome, and in their home stadium. I will present a detailed account of an away game to Palermo so that one may know exactly what goes on when Ultras travel for hours to see AS Roma play, and in order to explain why doing so is important to the Ultras. Then, I will present the reader with game experiences in Rome’s Olympic Stadium.

  Even a writer as quantitatively focused as Antonio Roversi has acknowledged that ‘war’ is the principle metaphor in the Ultras’ self-understanding.60 Dal Lago agreed with this idea and applied it to the in-game theatrics of the Ultras. His study, Descrizione di Una Battaglia, treats these theatrics as part of a larger cultural milieu in which symbolic plasticity and the movability of signs (such as the decontextualized political symbols adopted by the Ultras) bring the Ultras closer to the ‘festival’ described by Georges Bataille.61

  Simply put, Bataille’s ‘festival’ is an event in which prohibitions are transgressed and servility is contested, thereby limiting the distance between the profane and the sacred or forbidden aspects of human life. The festival is often violent, and transgressions seemingly verge on the animalistic. When the festival, or moment of transgression, is completed, the boundary between the profane and sacred is shattered, thus giving life a deeper and richer course.62

  According to Dal Lago, the Ultras understand soccer as a world strictly divided between friend and foe, and matches as a series of ritualized, and symbolic, confrontations between foes. The stadium, it follows, is transformed into a setting for these ‘festive’ confrontations. I say ‘festive’ because Dal Lago implies that this takes place in a ‘liminal zone’ in which the overweening order of profane life is momentarily cast off, allowing the Ultras to discharge the frustrations inherent in that life.63

  While maintaining the central thrust of Bataille’s understanding of the festival as a moment in which the forbidden is achieved and thereby enriches the experience of life, I question Dal Lago’s assumptions that this moment takes place in a location wherein Ultras leave behind, or unchain themselves from, their ‘daily’ or profane lives.

  Instead, my research shows that the Ultras are Ultras because of an exaggeration, rather than a transcendence, of the cultural systems that make up ‘profane existence.’ In other words, the rivalries and oppositions that fill soccer with meaning for the Ultras are brought into the stadium from other arenas, be they political, mythical, geographical, or historical. It is their willingness to live every day according to these rivalries that ultimately makes them Ultras and not just highly interested fans. Thus, we should not be surprised, as was John Foot, that two of the AS Roma Ultras arrested for getting the 2003–4 SS Lazio-AS Roma game suspended at halftime worked as a ‘cameraman and a financial consultant.’64

  Nevertheless, there is value in using Victor Turner’s theoretical constructions of ‘the liminal’ to explain Ultra behavior. Certainly, the away game experience acts as a rite of passage through which an Ultra comes to be ultra. More than liminality, though, it is the idea of communitas made popular by Victor Turner that best explains something about the Ultras. Communitas is a form of ‘social anti-structure’ through which persons who share biology, culture, or even extreme personal experience unite in opposition to the larger social structure to which they, nominally at least, belong.65 The Ultras’ use of war, as an example of what I am calling their agonistic culture (as I will demonstrate below and in Chapter Five), is the basis of their communitas. The extreme behaviors they share give them a rationale for severely limiting the scope of their altruistic horizons.

  It is with this in mind that we now move to a description of Ultra behaviors before, during, and after away games. It is away from Rome that AS Roma’s Ultras are best able to play-out one of the central tropes of war, and the Ultra phenomenon: redemption through struggle and sacrifice.

  The Trasferta (away game)

  One of the simplest but most common areas of Ultra behavior in which sacrifice is a guiding principle is their devotion to traveling long distances and to overcoming all obstacles to witness and participate in AS Roma’s games. One accrues special status among the Ultras if seen in the guest secti
ons of stadiums far from Rome. For example, at the end of the 2006–2007 season, AS Roma played a practically meaningless game at Palermo. Because the team’s final standing in the championship was essentially already determined, there was no ‘sporting’ reason to go to the game. However, for the Ultras it was an important opportunity to sacrifice and, more importantly, to suffer for the colors of the team and city.

  After years of following AS Roma away from Rome, the experience of doing so acquires a certain rhythm. The following sections describe some of the most important or meaningful aspects of the away game experience. Rightly, it begins the week before a game and the search for tickets. It continues through the travel to and arrival at the stadium and concludes with the game and return to Rome.

  Buying Tickets

  Every away game begins the week prior with a hunt for tickets. Before the Amato Decree, a set of laws passed in the days following the February 2007 death of Officer Raciti which severely restrict the actions of the Ultras, those in the groups that received tickets directly from AS Roma merely reported to their leader or leadership council their desire to attend the game. Otherwise, one needed only go to an official AS Roma store with a ticket office to buy away game tickets. Even as identification papers were required, so that each ticket holder’s name could be printed on each ticket, one person could carry all of the papers for his group and make a group purchase. Unless the game was of an importance that made availability an issue, one could easily acquire tickets to any AS Roma away game. However, after the Amato Decree, as a way to sever the ties between Ultras and the clubs, the latter were forbidden to sell tickets to away games; and tickets could no longer be sold in groups.

  Thus, acquiring tickets now requires Ultras to struggle and sacrifice, which they see as ‘doing their duty to the Curva.’ Ticket One, a service similar to America’s Ticketmaster, distributes the tickets for USC Palermo. To buy tickets for the game, AS Roma fans could go to any locale serving as a Ticket One ticket office. However, it was normal to arrive at one of these locales, usually a bar or tobacconist, only to be told that, in fact, they had no blank tickets for USC Palermo and, therefore, could not sell tickets. Given that there would normally be only one or two designated ticket offices in Rome for each sporting club, it made purchasing tickets difficult.

  Some teams, like the two teams from Milan, used Milanese banks as ticket offices. One or two branches in Rome would sell tickets to various sporting or cultural events. These banks, though, were notorious for refusing to sell tickets to Ultras. On one occasion, my wife and I purchased tickets to a game against Inter Milano. While waiting at a nearby bus stop an unfamiliar AS Roma fan asked us the location of the bank. Moments later he returned saying that he was told the bank did not sell tickets.

  In other instances, a team would use a local retailer as ticket office. Livorno’s team, for instance, used a perfume store on the northern edge of Rome. Others were linked to List Ticket, who had only one branch of Banca di Roma near the Termini train station that sold tickets. All told, it took time and effort to buy tickets, especially from the banks, because, their prejudice against rowdy fans aside, their hours of operation usually prohibited anyone with a job from easy access. Difficulties buying away game tickets became regular conversation on Lorenzo Contucci’s AS Roma Ultras website in 2007. Anyone, myself included, who found a bank branch or otherwise that would actually sell him or her a ticket invariably posted that information online.

  Because of the hardship suffered merely to buy tickets, the Ultras have incorporated this into their conception of what one must do to be or become an Ultra. There is no distance here between the in-game behaviors and the mundane everyday life of the Ultras. If one does not sacrifice oneself during the week then it matters little what one does on game days. In the past, day-to-day sacrifice might have meant community service or being present at group meetings. Now it includes hunting for tickets, which they use as an example of the distance between themselves and normal fans.

  The Ultras assumed that the State was making it difficult to purchase tickets to away games because it did not want them to travel. Instead of banning travel, which would be unconstitutional, the State would ensure that very few Ultras would make it to the games. Given the difficulties I faced in acquiring tickets, regularly having to travel from one side of Rome to the other in search of a vender who was willing or able to sell tickets, I feel confident in expressing the Ultras’ idea of sacrifice as a part of the away game process. For most of the Ultras I met, free tickets were a given until February 2007, but these free tickets were replaced by a maddening system of confusion that might take someone two days to acquire one ticket.

  Ticket costs were usually minimal, between twelve and eighteen euros. This allowed access to the guest section, the only section an Ultra would enter. The premise of the away game is to be with one’s group or friends, amassed in the small guest section against the superior numbers of the home fans. To be mixed with the home fans, as will be explained later, was seen as a sign of vulgarity and pointlessness.

  Transportation

  After acquiring tickets, one must arrange transportation. Even though the Amato Decree has made this more difficult as well, the options available to most Ultras do not involve the State or the clubs but other Ultras. To make the trip from Rome to Palermo for a Sunday game starting at 3 pm takes commitment. To arrive by automobile one needs nine hours; by train, almost thirteen. To fly takes only two hours but one expects to pay around 200 euros. Because spending money is not considered a sacrifice, and because many Ultras refuse to spend great sums of money to follow their team, most travel by train or automobile. This is true even for Ultras who have jobs and disposable income.

  Although it is more difficult today than in the recent past to take trains without paying, it is still part of the Ultras’ form of life to travel for free. On numerous away trips, I saw Ultras walking from one train car to the next, and back again, in a constant attempt to avoid the ticket checker. Another strategy was to lock oneself in the bathroom. I asked Giorgio, an Ultra of thirteen years about the practice. ‘Our goal is to pay as little as possible to follow AS Roma. Money should never be a substitute for one’s worthiness to be in the stadium,’ he explained, before adding that in the 2006–2007 season he took a seventeen-hour trek to Milan by way of small regional trains because these very rarely have ticket checkers. He could have taken a high-speed train, as I did, and arrived in Milan within four hours. Upon learning that I simply went to the ticket counter and bought a ticket to Milan, he laughed and said, ‘You will never be an Ultra until you sneak aboard a train. We never pay.’

  Therefore, the idea of using airlines to travel to away games is generally ruled out unless the game is outside of Italy. Before the 2006–2007 season the Italian state railway would organize special trains to transport large groups of fans to their destinations and back for free. However, the Amato Decree outlawed this practice in order to curtail the movement of the Ultras. It is still possible for Ultra groups to organize private buses, however, because they do so for profit, and because so few Ultras travel now, most buses are canceled in mid-week due to lack of interest. Hence most travel to and from away games these days takes place in automobiles.

  For the 2006–2007 Palermo game, however, most Ultras chose to arrive by train. With the game beginning at 3 pm on Sunday, they took the overnight train from Rome, leaving Saturday at 9 pm in order to arrive in time. Being on a train with Ultras is a unique experience. One witnesses fandom, camaraderie, affection, aggression, horseplay, and an array of insults. The trip began as was usual during my time with the Ultras: with flags and scarves waved from windows and twenty minutes or so of songs. Being unobserved by the authorities someone invariably made their way to the intercom and broadcast the performance to all of the train’s passengers. After this trip’s performance, the Ultras found seats and sleepers near their friends and group-mates. On the train to Palermo were approximately 100 Ultras. Of these, I only
saw eight females, four of whom were traveling with Fedayn. The group of Ultras as a whole was typical of those that traveled long distances. There were many leaders from the most important groups in Curva Sud, along with the most committed of their members. Ages ranged from approximately nineteen to forty-six, the age of Alessandro, a longtime member of Fedayn.

  Mangiamo!66

  Within each group, or group of friends, there seems always to be someone who always travels with food. Each time I enquired about the food’s origin, I was told with a knowing smile that, ‘mamma made it.’ Normally, when the group arrived at a stadium, the food carrier would open a backpack and begin distributing individually wrapped sandwiches to his friends. However, in Parma for a Coppa Italia game, I watched a small group of Ultras share a portion of perfectly sliced Prosciutto di Parma while discussing its merits relative to Friuli’s Prosciutto San Daniele.

  Other times food is central to the post-game experience. Returning by train to Rome from Empoli, a small town near Florence, my hunger was sated by a young Ultra whom I had never met. He passed sandwiches to his friends and caught me observing intently. He asked my wife and me if we were hungry. She politely answered, ‘No thank you’, while I said, ‘Yes thank you.’ Seconds later we were sharing a sandwich. Similarly, in one of the buses arranged by the city of Milan to transport AS Roma fans from the San Siro stadium to the Milan Central train station after a game against Inter, a group of friends devoured a sack full of sandwiches as a machine-gun toting Carabiniere observed. They laughed as someone asked his permission to eat in jest.