by Mark Dyal
Not just the State, nor the police, but Calcio Moderno. As Fabio of Boys explained, ‘The games continued not to benefit the communities in which the games are played nor the youth or families, which the media claims are the true victims of our behavior. They continued for SKY, Mediaset, Telecom Italia, and the other corporate sponsors of soccer on television.’ And now, the Ultras, who understand themselves as the only true fans of the game, as well as the only ones fighting (literally) to keep the game connected to its roots, expected to face a lengthy, perhaps permanent, ban from the stadiums.
Speaking in this way made them think, too, of their situation. They were certainly facing a lengthy stadium ban. Their response, though, was sobering. ‘Macchì se ne frega un cazzo?’ (Who gives a fuck?) Who cares about soccer or AS Roma when an Ultra was killed for doing nothing more than supporting his team? What does any of it matter when the game is in the hands of those who care only about maximizing corporate sponsorship and then making that sponsorship as profitable as possible? Thus, the Ultras echoed the cries heard in the media and from the offices of FIGC, although looking at the situation from an opposing point of view: we are witnessing the death of Italian soccer.
Consequences
Raciti and the Policing of the Ultras: The Decreto Amato and Osservatorio
To better understand the thoughts of the Ultras, we must return to the aftermath of Raciti’s death in February 2007. Following the actions of the Catania Ultras, all of Italy’s Ultras were demonized. It was impossible to watch television, listen to the radio, or enter a piazza or café without hearing someone speaking of the Ultras. There was no mention of the life devoted to honor, commitment, and sacrifice that I had come to know, but instead talk of criminals, hoodlums, and delinquents. I took it upon myself to wear a Boys Roma hat around Rome after the killing and was asked to remove it one morning by a barman at Tazza d’Oro (one of Rome’s most venerated cafés). Ironically, on January 31, 2007, just two days prior to Raciti’s death, and on an evening when AS Roma played AC Milan in the second-leg of the Coppa Italia semi-final, Curva Sud unfurled the banner asking, ‘You (all) write in newspapers, and talk on the radio, but when do you (all) come to the stadium?’ Even before the media barrage surrounding Raciti, the Ultras understood themselves to be at war with the media.
More important than the press, post-Raciti the government was talking about the Ultras, making it clear that life as the Ultras had known it before was officially over. Not only, they were told, would organized travel to away games be outlawed, but also all of the performative elements of the Ultra form of life: bombs, flares, banners, and (certain) songs. Those speaking most vociferously against the Ultras were Giuliano Amato (Minister of the Interior), Giovanna Melandri (Minister of Youth and Sports), and Antonio Matarrese (President of Lega Calcio). While Matarrese spoke of cracking down on delinquency and making soccer safe for families, Melandri spoke of the ills of Italian sport (especially when compared to England’s policing of hooliganism) and of her desire to implement a modello inglese (English Model) based on strict and aggressive policing, all-seated stadiums, and zero-tolerance of violence. For his part, Amato spoke of ridding soccer once and for all of the Ultras.
On Thursday February 8, Amato announced that he and the National Observatory of Sporting Events had devised a set of amendments to Legge 401 (Law 401 — the set of laws dating from 1989 that set the terms and conditions of policing and penalizing violent acts relating to sporting events). The Observatory is a governing body made up of various governmental departments, including the Ministry of the Interior, the police and the Carabiniere, as well as Trenitalia and Autogril (restaurants and gas-stations located along Italy’s highways) that has advised policy and policing decisions for sporting events since 1999. Until 2007 it had only an advisory capacity regarding the reduction of ‘soccer-related violence’ but now was given the authority to change the face of Italian soccer. Autogril was included on the Observatory board because, as violence was defeated in the stadiums, and organized travel to-and-from away games became more diligently policed, the Ultras adapted to the changing situation began traveling in smaller numbers and using these highway stops as the setting for their conflicts.
The proposal motivated by Raciti’s death, quickly dubbed the Decreto Amato (Amato Decree), consisted of seven points:
1. Any act of violence against a public official will be punishable with a prison term of between four and ten years. Any act resulting in grave bodily harm will be punishable of a prison term of between eight and ten years.
2. The displaying of any banners containing incitements to violence, racial, cultural, or bodily insults or insensitivity, will be punishable by expulsion from all Italian stadiums for between one and five years. Further, all banners must be pre-approved by the club hosting the event in question. Approvals are based upon the criteria set out by the Amato Decree. Displaying of unapproved banner will result in expulsion from all Italian stadiums for three years.
3. The ‘statute of limitations’ for arrest after the event of soccer-related violence is extended from thirty-six to forty-eight hours.
4. Any stadium unable to reach the security plan set forth in the Amato Decree will be prohibited from hosting spectators. Included in this section is the prohibition of the selling of blocks of tickets (more than four) to traveling supporters. Any club found to be doing so will face financial penalties and possibly criminal charges.
5. All tickets must include the holder’s name, location of purchase, and, if applicable, a codice fiscale (fiscal code — similar to American Social Security Numbers). Also included is the instruction that seat assignments must be respected and adhered to.
6. The creation of the designation DASPO (Divieto di Accedere alle Manifestazioni Sportive — Prohibited from Entering Sporting Events) assigned to persons prohibited from attending sporting events, including criminal charges that can result in prison terms (see 1).
7. The mandatary placement of one steward for every two hundred spectators in a stadium, a move that subtracted seats from spectators in a stadium’s various sections.
Many Ultras, if not all of them, understood the Amato Decree as not having the intention of diminishing soccer-related violence, but of destroying the organizational bases of the Ultras. As Fabrizio of Boys Roma explained it, it was a declaration of war against the Ultras, done so with the conceptualization of the Ultras as hooligans — maleducati (ill-bred or bad mannered) hoodlums with no interest in soccer or cultural traditions, but only in causing trouble. When asked about the cultural traditions upheld by the Ultras he explained:
The new measures seek to make everything illegal. No more political flags, songs, or messages in stadiums; no more flares, smoke bombs, or bombs; no more standing with your group — organized or of friends; no more songs against the other team. We are now to come to the stadium to buy overpriced beer and watch in silence as overpaid illiterates kick a ball around. Instead of the beauty that is “il calcio” (soccer) we now get organized intermixing of “real fans” in the expensive seats, calls for changes to Italy’s culture, and a stadium experience exceptional only for its sterility and anonymity.
When I pressed him on what was in fact being outlawed, he answered ‘politics, theatrics, community, and fierce rivalry: in a word, dissent.’ We talked some more about ‘the beauty of soccer’ and Fabrizio explained the Ultras as the encapsulation of what was greatest in Italian history. The country’s greatness was not cultural production (in his mind a material phenomenon) but ‘the unrestrained passion for, and celebration of, something greater than ourselves [indicating me and him].’ This was not the first time one of my Ultra informants spoke in extreme terms about the importance of the Ultras, but it was the first that I heard this theme connected to a general model of Italian history.
I pressed him further, asking how the Ultras embodied this greatness. ‘There are two things,’ he said, ‘we live like children of an old mentality. For us the first
thing is rivalry. I am Roman and for me Rome is the preeminent city in the world. I don’t give a damn about other Italian cities. And two, we dare to risk our lives every week for Rome. For this we are Ultras.’ He continued a while, talking about Ancient Rome, Renaissance rivalries with Florence, the Northern League phenomenon, and even the Decima Flottiglia MAS, a Special Forces division of the Italian Royal Navy. ‘In all these,’ he said, ‘are the examples of how a Roman and how an Ultra is to live: daring, honorably, fearlessly, defensively, passionately and exaltedly.’
What the Ultras exalt, he continued, is not violence or drunkenness, as do hooligans, but ‘the willingness to suffer to defend the honor of Rome against the infidels. When they say that we can be adversaries and not enemies they are saying that our culture is dead. Do you understand? Italy’s is a history of rivalry, division, and suspicion, indeed hatred. Why should we change what has made us so particular and beautiful, and for whose benefit?’
Fabrizio’s conceptualization of himself as an Ultra and a Roman matches the Ultras’ monumental use of history in that it operates selectively. For Fabrizio, the Ultras are connected to, as he said, the greatest things about Italian history. Rivalry and campanilismo aside, however, he made it clear that what is greatest about Italian history is Rome. Nor is Fabio alone to be enveloped in a world that simultaneously exalts Rome and the Ultras; all of the Ultras with whom I developed a relationship are. What became clear in the moments of crisis, after Raciti and Sandri, was that they saw the Italian State as an imposition that attempts to break the connection between Rome, or more specifically Romanità, and being an Ultra.
This of course would not be the case for an Ultra in Genova, for instance, but this points to the fractured and highly local nature of being an Ultra. For the Romans, the strength and courage they speak so much about as central to being an Ultra is inspired by Rome. The State’s attempt to destroy the Ultras is in essence the attempt of a modern, bourgeois nation-state to destroy something primal, a spirit of Romanità, which predates the State. In other words, the State is a foreign imposition seeking to impose its will upon the ‘true Romans,’ as they call themselves in song.
Federico, formerly of Antichi Valori, does not believe the State’s desire to eliminate the Ultras is motivated by the latter’s violent proclivities. Mirroring the comments of Fabio concerning Calcio Moderno’s culpability in the death of Sandri, he argues, rather, that the Ultras are bad for business. ‘We are the last voices of freedom connected with soccer in Italy,’ he said via telephone in 2010. ‘We have been in the stadium since 1972 teaching the youth and anyone who could hear us about the evils of consumption and the joy of a pure connection between city, people, and team. We protest everything the new business of soccer attempts to do, be it foreign ownership, hyper-advertising, teams as commodities, and most importantly, fans as consumers. Besides,’ he concluded, ‘I used to fight every-other weekend, from 1999 to 2004, and often during the off season [he told an incredible story of some unsuspecting foreign tourists wearing AC Milan gear in Rome whom he and the rest of Antichi Valori set upon near Piazza Navona], but no one I know has been in a fight since. Ultra violence is over.’ ‘Because of the State?’ I asked. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘but more importantly because the Ultras who would fight are all outside the Ultras now. The State is fighting ghosts if it is truly fighting the violent Ultras.’
Indeed, the Observatory’s own documents show that violence related to soccer, at least in Serie A, is largely a thing of the past. During the 2004–2005 season, there were thirty-five games at which fighting occurred between fans. In 2005–2006 the number was reduced to sixteen, rising to eighteen in 2006–2007. The total number of injuries occurring during these encounters was fifty-one in 2004–2005, forty-four in 2005–2006, and thirty-two in 2006–2007. Injuries occurring to police officers fell from one hundred and seventeen in 2004–2005, to fifteen in 2005–2006. They climbed to forty-eight in 2006–2007, the season in which the large-scale violence in Catania claimed the life of Filippo Raciti. Arrests have remained steady. In 2004–2005 and 2006–2007 there were thirty-seven arrested. In 2005–2006 the number dropped considerably to seventeen. Despite consistency in arrests, the number of charges filed climbed from one hundred and forty-three in 2004–2005 to one hundred and seventy-six in 2006–2007.85
With the State’s own statistics demonstrating a diminution of violence between Ultras and the police, it makes the stark measures and strong words aimed at marginalizing the Ultras after the deaths of Raciti and Sandri even more conspicuous. The deaths and the Ultras’ responses to them were used by the State as excuses to repress the Ultras. The State even considered the violence of the Roman Ultras on November 11, 2007 to be an act of terrorism aimed at overthrowing the government. As preposterous as this sounded to the Ultras, such language served the purpose of legitimizing the crackdown on all forms of Ultra action, even those as benign as carrying flags and colors into a stadium. Similarly, any acts of coordinated Ultra action, such as manifestations against club malfeasance or potential foreign investment, are roundly attacked in the press. It is easy to conclude, therefore, that the State is using violence as an excuse to rid the business of soccer of the Ultras.
From personal experience, it is clear that policing methods are working to reduce violence at matches. In the approximately sixty games that I attended during fifteen months of research (from October 2006 to January 2008) I did not witness any incident that could be called fighting by the Ultras or police. I saw posturing, heard insults, and occasionally felt menaced because I was at the mercy of home fans with a position of strategic advantage (to throw items into the guest section). Despite standing amongst the hardest of the most reviled Ultras in Italy (according to another Observatory document from 2002, AS Roma’s Ultras were involved in 15% of all fighting in Italy, regardless of league) there was simply nothing to report in terms of actual violence. However, the attitudes toward violence I observed were another matter and will be examined below.
Whistlegate
As the days passed after the February 2007 death of Raciti and the polemics and promises piled up, the Ultras were in limbo. They knew from past experience that tough talk was followed by little action and even less change. Still, they worried that this time it was not an Ultra who was killed, but one of the State’s own, which might incite retaliatory action. This prompted a variety of actions. One longtime Ultra I met during the week when the games were cancelled (to plan for a soccer without Ultras as well as honor Raciti) was at once convinced that nothing would change and that the Ultras were now a dead phenomenon. He was not speaking thus because of the bankruptcy of the Ultras’ mentalità, as some older Ultras had said, but because ‘the government will not allow us to be Ultras.’
On February 11, 2007, the games recommenced. AS Roma hosted Parma FC, and because the Olympic Stadium had long ago implemented the electronic ticketing system with corresponding turnstiles, AS Roma was allowed to ‘host its public.’ Outside the stadium there were long lines waiting to enter Curva Sud. The police were frisking every entrant, as well as unfurling all flags and banners. In Curva Sud there were a few more stewards visible than normal, but otherwise, nothing had changed. The fear that an army of stewards enforcing seating assignments would destroy the groups de facto was, in the end, unfounded. If anything, the pre-game mood was festive. All the groups hung their banners and unfurled their flags. Friends hugged and laughed. Food was shared, and many beers.
It was just as the Curva is meant to be. Then something incredible happened. After the players entered the field to the stadium’s singing of ‘Roma Roma’ (the club’s anthem) by Antonello Venditti, they gathered around the center-circle. It was announced that a moment of silence for Filippo Raciti would be observed. Within seconds, the Curva was awash in a cacophony of whistles — an act of supreme disrespect, and one that forced the rest of the stadium to clap for the minute, in the hope of salvaging the dignity of the occasion. (It is customary in Italy
to clap during moments of silence, but the press claimed the authorities had hoped instead for stone silence in order to accentuate the solemnity and seriousness of the occasion.) After the game, Francesco of Fedayn agreed that the whistles were disrespectful. They were meant, as he said, to match the disrespect shown the Ultras by the State and media during the week. From my position in the Curva, I could tell the whistles began in the upper-left section occupied by Fedayn. However, according to radio reports of the whistles, they were begun by Boys. For their part, Boys silently turned their backs on the proceedings in another premeditated protest at their being forced to join in the commemoration of Raciti’s death and the degradation of the Ultras.
The media described the Ultras as ‘disgraceful,’ ‘stupid,’ ‘idiotic,’ ‘a minority of barbarity in a sea of gentility,’ ‘ungrateful,’ and, finally, ‘defeated.’86 Callers to post-game radio shows said the Ultras should be banned for life from attending games. At a meeting between some members of Boys and Ultras Primavalle-San Lorenzo in midweek, the discussion was dominated by the press reactions to what I was calling ‘whistlegate.’ Matteo of Primavale was dismissive, saying, ‘It was of no consequence to the Ultras what was printed in newspapers, as the journalists know nothing and invent what they write.’ It was expected, then, that they would strumentalizzare (instrumentalize, or exploit for profit) any situation against the Ultras.