Hated and Proud- Ultras Contra Modernity

by Mark Dyal

  This is not to suggest that soccer was not already associated with advertising, celebrity, and multinational corporations. However, even at that late date, the game was far more locally based, even given its broad international popularity, than American sports had been since the late-1950s.324 The fears of many seemed to be realized when, with the purpose of making the 130-year-old game more charming to the uninterested US market, FIFA proposed using twenty-five minute quarters to appeal to advertisers and, in a bid to attract American viewers, making the goal size larger to promote higher scores.325

  Given the audacity of these proposals, which rendered the game a malleable form of entertainment rather than a deeply ingrained aspect of local cultures, it was a short slippery slope to envision its further Americanization.326 The most extreme form of the expected transformation was a lowering of the game’s topophilia (deep connection with place). From Britain and Europe, scholars and fans saw in the US experience of sport a lack of symbolic fixity. This was evident in the football, baseball, and basketball teams (not to mention players) that had moved from city to city; sometimes, as with New York’s baseball Giants and Brooklyn’s Dodgers, leaving behind devoted fans and historic stadiums in order to seek higher profits thousands of miles from where the teams began. With this lack of connection to their surroundings, American sports was seen as the domain of mere franchises that lacked the depth of memory that had made football clubs synonymous with the populations of which they were a part.

  The Bosman Ruling

  Almost fifteen years removed from the 1994 World Cup, British and European football is not the freak-show many envisioned, but neither is it the game it once was. FIFA, UEFA, and the European Union have combined to set in motion a system that many see as damaging the local particularities of the game. The first two began working together (and with member nations) in the late-1990s to amend citizenship requirements and taxation statutes in order to make transfers of players less cumbersome — in effect, to ensure their legality. They did so in order to synchronize international transfers, or player moves, with the 1995 European Court of Justice’s Bosman Ruling. According to ‘The Bosman Rule,’ soccer transfers are subject to the same rules as Article 48 of the European Community Treaty, which states that no European national (provided they are a citizen of an EU member state) can be prohibited from working in any member state. In other words, soccer players must be considered part of the free movement of labor between states. The ruling also declared illegal (because discriminatory) any attempts to place quotas on the number of foreign players in a given club, league, or nation.

  Global Clubs

  In Europe, it is the clubs that have the most to gain and lose from globalization. Although the majority of Europe’s clubs remain attached to a fixed locale, relying upon the loyalty of fans and local businesses to provide enough profit to stay in business, there is a noticeable trend wherein certain clubs have gained tremendous stature and power, thus placing their connections to place in jeopardy. These are the so-called ‘global clubs,’ those that rely on a global, as opposed to local, fan base and globally recruited players.

  There are seven truly global clubs: Manchester United and Liverpool of England, Internazionale, AC Milan, and Juventus of Italy, and Real Madrid and Barcelona of Spain.327 These clubs formed the core of the G14, a group of the largest clubs in the world, which united with the intent of lobbying FIFA and UEFA collectively for restitution from national associations in the event of player injuries occurring on ‘international duty’ (when the player is playing for his national team).328

  Soccer in this context is understood as big business. This has rendered community focus, not to mention community ownership (which had been a part of the English experience until the second-half of the twentieth century), as counter-to-progress. Of the teams mentioned above, four are foreign owned. Indeed, foreigners owned seven of the twenty teams that played in the English Premier League (EPL) in 2007–2008; two of them, Manchester United and Liverpool, are owned by Americans (Malcolm Glazer and Tom Hicks and George Gillett, respectively) who acted through investment banks to gain sufficient funds for their purchases. Roman Abramovich, a Russian oil magnate, owns Chelsea FC. And, until September 2008, Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Prime Minister of Thailand, owned Manchester City, at which time it was bought by Abu Dhabi United Group, a private equity company of Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the royal family of the United Arab Emirates.

  There were no foreign owners in Italy’s Serie A until 2011, when American Thomas DiBenedetto led a consortium of American financiers and hedge fund managers to the purchase of AS Roma. The American takeover sent shockwaves through Curva Sud, as instead of being able to perceive of the club as a local property the Ultras had to face the reality that Calcio Moderno was now imbedded in the symbols and traditions that they hold so dear. No longer could AS Roma be held up as a Roman team for Romans. Instead it became the sport’s most visible symbol of all that is wrong with globalization and capitalism, as the new owners quickly brought Nike and Disney onboard to help promote the ‘global brand of AS Roma.’ Unfortunately, I had long left Rome by the time of the takeover (which was spurred in part by the neoliberal adjustment of sovereignty from States to financial institutions that left many banks in crisis, including Unicredit, the Italian bank holding AS Roma’s debt) and have been unable to precisely register the Ultras’ response. From afar, however, it seems to be surprisingly complex, as some Ultras considered it the final nail in the coffin of AS Roma’s centrality to their symbolic universe, while others shrugged it off as of little importance, as the club and Ultras had long been contentious of one another.

  The latter reaction is the more interesting of the two, as it allows the Ultras to continue to cheer on the colors of the city without concern for the machinations of global finance that now govern the fortunes of the team. But it also puts the relationship between Ultras and clubs in starker contrast — becoming something akin to their distance from the State and the media. Keeping Curva Sud — and their daily lives — clean of the tentacles that attach bourgeois men and women to the debts, rationalities, and rhythms of hyper-capitalism and its Statist lackeys is still a central thrust of the Ultras. Indeed, it must be so if Italian soccer is to maintain any of the color, pageantry, and ferocity for which it became renown.

  Giancarlo Abete, president of the Italian Football Federation (FIGC), has often stated that the EPL is the ideal model to move Italy’s soccer into the twenty-first century. Foreign investment, in the form of ownership and players is key, but more so, according to Abete, is a ‘professionalization’ of the Italian league, and a changing of Italy’s ‘culture of sport.’ Leaving aside, for the moment, the question of culture, the English league has ascended to the top of European soccer by focusing on profits. These are made primarily through television rights, merchandise branding, and through winning the UEFA Champions League.

  The English Premiere League and Television

  The EPL has changed the experience of soccer for English and worldwide fans. The EPL was formed in 1991 in order to revolutionize English soccer, which at the time was seen as ‘suffering’ from old stadiums, dwindling attendances, and widespread hooliganism. The impetus for the EPL was the 1989 Taylor Report, a governmental investigation into the causes of a 1988 stadium riot and stampede that left ninety-six Liverpool supporters dead.329 Lord Taylor of Gosforth concluded that the deaths resulted from poor stadium design and limited policing of fans inside the Hillsborough stadium.

  The ‘problems’ of the English game at that time are regularly cited to describe today’s Italian soccer. It is not lost on the Ultras that they are the only ones at the games. Just considering AS Roma, game attendance data show significant drops in every year since 2000–2001. In that year, AS Roma averaged 59,402 spectators. By 2007–2008, AS Roma’s average was 37,276. Serie A’s attendance from 2004–2005 to 2007–2008 fell from 9,421,549 (an average of 26,098 per game) to 8,575,31
4 (an average of 23,887 per game).330 In that time, attendance figures for Curva Sud remained stable at 19,000 and then 17,000 in 2007–2008 per game (the maximum number of seats).331 In other words, Curva Sud is completely full for every game.

  What lies behind the decrease in soccer attendance is debated in every café, piazza, and newspaper in Italy. The reasons given range from structural to behavioral, but always include three things: Ultra violence, TV, and stadiums. For their part, the Ultras agree that the explosion in popularity of televised soccer and the horrible state of many Italian stadiums are factors contributing to diminished attendances.

  The most important aspect of the EPL is that it negotiates its own television deal. Thus, it is financially separated from the five (lower) associated levels of the EFA, which are home to hundreds of local small-town teams across England. The first EPL television deal was signed in 1992 with SKY for 191 million pounds over five seasons. The latest was signed with SKY and Setanta, a Scottish broadcaster, for 1.7 billion pounds over three seasons. When combined with highlights permissions and international rights, the total television related income for the 2007–2010 EPL will be 2.7 billion pounds (an average of forty-five million pounds per team per year).332

  In 2003, Rupert Murdoch created SKY Italia as a way to compete with Berlusconi’s Mediaset for Italy’s untapped television potential. Until the 2003–2004 season, RAI and Mediaset combined to televise a handful of games on free television per week. The larger teams had satellite distribution contracts with Telepiù and Stream. It was these companies that Murdoch purchased for 600 million British Pounds. By September 2008 SKY Italia had between five and seven million subscribers. These pay between thirty and fifty euros per month (adding up to between 300 and 500 euros per season) to watch all of the games of their favorite team, the Champions League, other European soccer leagues, and special programming such as AS Roma Channel, which broadcasts news, training sessions, and other activities within the club. Meanwhile, a season ticket for Curva Sud, ensuring entrance (plus the right to purchase the same seat for Coppa Italia and Champions League games) to nineteen Serie A games, cost 155 euros for the 2008–2009 season.333

  In order to hasten the creation of EPL-style profits, in 2008 the State agreed to the collective selling of broadcast rights beginning with the 2010–2011 season. It was estimated that such a deal would cost someone (either Murdoch or Berlusconi) approximately 900 million euros. In fact, the rights to televise the two seasons between 2010 and 2012 were sold to SKY for 1.149 billion euros!

  The EPL and Merchandising

  American-style merchandising is another way EPL clubs are seeking to increase profits. When Tom Hicks was introduced as co-owner of Liverpool FC, he told a Sky audience that besides the UEFA Champions League, he would use merchandising to make Liverpool the ‘richest club in the world.’ To do so, he explained, Liverpool would be made into a brand that would produce its own line of football and sports related merchandise and attract the highest caliber of corporate sponsorship. The model for such a venture, he continued, was Malcolm Glazer’s Manchester United, whose superstore was selling literally thousands of Manchester United related items, while AIG paid 56.5 million pounds over four years for its sponsorship logo on the player’s jerseys and Nike paid 302.9 million pounds over thirteen years to supply the team’s uniforms. By contrast, AS Roma’s income from the Turin-based Italian sportswear firm Kappa is five million euros per season — although that figure is expected to rise considerably in 2014, when Nike will begin sponsoring the team.

  The EPL and Champions League

  Because of their income from television and sponsorships, EPL teams have recently dominated the third avenue of revenue increase: the UEFA Champions League, whose competition runs concurrent with the domestic leagues of Southern and Western Europe. It consists of the champion of each UEFA affiliated nation’s highest professional league, plus finishers from second to fourth position in the most difficult leagues (i.e. Italy, England, Spain, Germany, Netherlands and Portugal).

  The EPL placed three teams (Manchester United, Chelsea, and Liverpool) in the final four of the 2006–2007 and 2007–2008 Champions Leagues. Even as Italy’s AC Milan won the competition in 2006–2007, its victory did not keep Italy from falling further behind the English in terms of profiting from ‘the business of soccer.’ According to Deloitte’s ‘Football Money League,’ Italy’s Serie A is worth 40% less than the EPL based on overall club revenues. According to the 2007–2008 list, released each season with details of the previous season, six of the fourteen wealthiest clubs in the world are in the EPL. That includes Newcastle United, which finished the corresponding EPL season in thirteenth position.

  There is no set prize money. Instead, a club will receive an increased share of the income generated by independent national television rights agreements, pay-per-view, and internet pay-per-view. When AS Roma reached the final-eight during the 2007–2008 competition, they received approximately thirty-five million euros. Manchester United, winner in 2007–2008, expected revenues of eighty-five million pounds. Runner-up Chelsea FC expected to receive thirty-five million pounds. The same article explained that the final, played in Moscow, was expected to be a financial boon to more than the two competing clubs. The betting industry, bars and restaurants, travel, consumer goods, and supermarkets hoped to benefit from approximately two hundred and ten million pounds in revenue (consumption increases comparable with the NFL’s Super Bowl in the United States).

  With this kind of money to be made, the EPL was quick to rid itself of the ‘problems’ it had inherited. The game experience until the Taylor Report has been described as ‘chaos’.334 Urination in the stands, pushing, shoving, drinking, smoking, and singing were ritualized behaviors one expected to encounter at soccer games. The attendance of women and young children was rare. The political voice of the working class was historically galvanized at soccer matches. Political songs and occasionally banners spoke of local identities through tales of pride and defiance.335 Fireworks, field invasions, and fighting were also common. While many sociologists, most notably Eric Dunning, have studied the violence and general mayhem associated with English soccer fandom, and concluded that such behaviors are due to a failure in the ‘civilizing process’ of the English working class, others look back on the days before the Taylor Report and the EPL longingly.336

  One of these is Dave Boyle, one-time president of the Football Supporters’ Association (FSA), an organization that campaigns for fan representation on club boards as well as fans’ rights such as the right to stand during a soccer match.337 Boyle maintains that soccer has abandoned its original (and still core) supporters. He says that fans are now understood ‘merely as consumers with a ceaseless thirst for all things football related.’ The FSA, he explained, was against the FIFA/UEFA model of big clubs and leagues operating for the benefit of corporate sponsors and spectacular television.338 What the FSA seeks, then, is a return to a time when local fans were the driving force behind the game’s popularity.

  AS Roma and Calcio Moderno

  According to SKY News, AS Roma was the tenth richest club in the world as a result of the 2006–2007 season, making 106.1 million British Pounds. 70.3 million of that came from broadcast revenues. With so little money being generated locally (the club brought in less than three million euros from the sale of Curva Sud season tickets during the same season), and with so much of Calcio Moderno focusing on the financial and business aspects of the game, it is no wonder, say the Ultras, as self-proclaimed ‘protectors of the game’ (by which they mean its deep connections to place), that clubs are seeking profits rather than public approval. The close relations between the Ultras and the clubs (which the 2007 Amato Decree destroyed when it went into effect) were designed to keep pressure on the clubs to keep their local constituents in mind at all times. The two most recent and damaging large-scale Ultra eruptions (before Raciti and Sandri) were not only attacks on Calcio Moderno (by disrupting broadcasts and mak
ing the game too risky for investment/advertisement) but also on clubs which had been seen as taking the Ultras for granted while only pursuing the commercial interests of the game.

  Despite AS Roma’s position amongst the wealthiest clubs in the world, and despite it regularly fielding a team that includes foreign players, the Ultras still feel that the club is an organic part of Rome’s locality. As I explained above, foreign fans can be accepted into the legion of Ultras through their display of loyalty to the Ultras, Rome, and AS Roma. Likewise, foreign players who ‘play for the shirt’ are given a type of ‘honorary Roman’ status, not unlike that granted to me. In this way, the Ultras negotiate the contradiction between supporting a financially successful ‘modern’ club and the desire to have AS Roma all to themselves. Although the long-standing (until 2007) relationship between AS Roma and the Curva provided the Ultras a way to actually influence the running of the club, thus promoting the feelings of proprietorship that guided such a relationship, it can be argued now that the war that the Ultras are fighting against Calcio Moderno and the destruction of localism in soccer, is over.

  If so, and the Ultras have been ‘culturally dispossessed’ of AS Roma, then they may be entering the last phase of their history.339 After all, there is little-to-nothing that is compromising in their make-up, and, as Andrews and Ritzer have argued, within global capitalism, cultural forms that are ‘generally indigenously conceived, controlled, and comparatively rich in distinctive substantive content are a virtual impossibility’.340 What we might see instead is the shifting of Ultra behavior to other areas of social and political life (to be examined in the concluding chapter).