by Mark Dyal
Ever since the death of Raciti, the State had become far more vociferous in its attacks on the Ultras. Many of these have been outlined in the previous chapters, but the ones that left the deepest impression in the subsequent years were those that infringed not upon the pageantry of the Curva but its very freedom. These had begun with the seemingly simple demand that the Ultras notify the police by fax machine of their desire to carry a banner into the stadium, so that it may either be approved or prohibited. By now, of course, the Ultras were fully aware that the battle was not against soccer-related violence but against their voices as critics of Calcio Moderno and the abasement of Italian life in general. The State, then, was seen as merely trying to provoke the Ultras into abandoning the curvas and leaving the business of soccer free to make its profits, and the political class and media free to force Italians to submit to the needs of neoliberalism and what the Ultras always called turbo-capitalism.
In response, however, the Ultras merely stopped bringing banners into the stadium, as much as an affront to their sense of defiant freedom as this was. There were a few, however, such as the group that consistently managed to bring in a crude banner saying only, ‘No Fax;’ or the other brave souls who brought in a larger one to Roma’s 2007 game against AC Milan explaining that their fax machine was broken. The latter’s sense of humor, panache, and defiance was applauded throughout Italy, and it felt similar to the spirit of the ‘Odio Napoli’ game later that year (described in Chapter Four).
An uneasy status quo eventually returned to the Curva, even after the polemics in the wake of the violence following Sandri’s killing. A government minister would proclaim this or that prohibited, and yet invariably one curva or another would be seen reveling in whatever had just been outlawed. It was a merely a new terrain to traverse, some new struggle to endure for the sake of AS Roma, Rome, and the Curva. But then in 2009, Roberto Maroni, Minister of the Interior, announced the creation of a new identification system called the Tessera del Tifoso.382
The Tessera would be required by anyone wishing to buy a season ticket, but also anyone seeking to attend an away game. On the face of it, the Tessera is merely an identification card. In theory, this is little different from the named tickets that were required during my fieldwork period. However, as the weeks and months went by, it became clear not only that the Tessera was going to be implemented for the 2010–2011 season, but that it would be — and is — more than a mere identificatory device. In order to be issued one, a police background check must be passed, prohibiting anyone with a history of sports-related violence or with another arrestable anti-social offense. In effect, this amounts to a lifetime ban from soccer stadiums, regardless of the original terms of one’s sentence. If one is decent enough to pass the police interrogation, they may then be issued the passport and be proclaimed an ‘official’ fan of one’s club.
What they must then do is link the Tessera to a bank account complete with an individual fiscal code (equivalent to the US’s Social Security Number) and a photograph. It is the linking of the card to a bank account that raised Ultras’ collective eyebrows. Why, they and many others asked, were soccer fans being forced to open or maintain bank accounts just to watch soccer games? Why were soccer fans being forced to deposit money in banks that had very recently expropriated billions of dollars and euros in austerity measures and ‘misappropriation’ forgiveness? The answer is unsurprising if also a bit audacious: fans that maintain good behavior records — including the buying of many tickets — receive points that may be redeemed for discounts at official club stores when the fan pays using the Tessera. Eradicating violence, the Italian State seemed to understand, went hand in hand with increasing personal debt through consumption. It is as if Maroni was reading Maurizio Lazzarato’s works on how neoliberalism rules by increasing debt and by linking ideas of optimal individual behavior to those of financial responsibility and finding some perverted destructive power therein.383
To its credit, AS Roma listened to the indignant howls coming from its least favorite fans, and attempted to side step the Tessera, especially after the realization that the microchip implanted in the card was to share personal data between the police/surveillance apparatus and the banks. Nonetheless the government made clear that the passport was mandatory, and it remains so today, albeit in slightly modified form.
When it was implemented, Curva Sud Roma, of course, refused to cooperate, citing its own exalted role as a theater of freedom in Rome, Italy, Europe, and the World; although the issue, like most with the Curva, was contested, and some chose to accept the terms of the Tessera in order to attend games, while others, like Boys Roma, chose to stay away (if only for a short protest). Several of the groups that had been integral to the Curva of 2006–2008, like Ultras Romani and Padroni di Casa, disbanded as a result of the Tessera’s implementation or soon thereafter, leaving Fedayn and Boys Roma as the only remaining large groups of the Curva. For their part, many of those who chose to continue attending games cited Maroni’s, and by extension the State’s, desire to rid the stadiums of the undesirables: ‘If Maroni wants me out,’ they said, ‘I’m going in.’ Although some went in, season ticket sales plummeted as the Tessera became the norm, bottoming out at 16,000 in 2011–2012.384
Eventually attendance stabilized, topping 27,000 for the 2014–2015 season, as the Ultras begrudgingly accepted the price of their collective ticket. Or perhaps they were all just anxious to get another chance to create a Roma-Napoli game of epic proportions. On May 3, 2014, at the end of the 2013–2014 season, Napoli played against Fiorentina in the Coppa Italia Final in Rome. Before that game could commence, though, there were clashes near the stadium between AS Roma Ultras and their Neapolitan counterparts.
As game time approached, word was circulating that a Napoli fan had been shot during an ambush. Napoli Ultras were understandably furious, pelting the field with anything at hand and making menacing gestures at the police who were hastily filling the stadium. Eventually, however, the Ultras calmed as Marek Hamsik, captain of the Napoli soccer team, met with one of the Ultra leaders. They came to an agreement, and the game was played. ‘But wait!’ the television commentators were exclaiming, ‘What the hell did we just witness?!?’ As I said, one of the leaders of the Napoli Ultras gave his approval for the game to be played, and it was played: not the Police Prefect, the Minister of the Interior, or even the Prime Minister, but a lowly Ultra.
This situation was not unique. In 2004, the Lazio-Roma derby had been suspended at halftime under similar circumstances. Rumors spread throughout the stadium that the police had killed a child before the game, and by halftime both curvas were boiling with rage. Francesco Totti, the venerable Roma captain, came below Curva Sud and met with Ultra leaders who demanded the game be suspended. He gave the message to other players and officials and the game was canceled. By then, though, the rumor had proven to be just that. So, what was actually happening? Perhaps nothing more, but the message eventually became that the Ultras stopped the game as a demonstration of fan power: that the fans are more important and powerful than the profiteering and homogenizing forces of Calcio Moderno.
During the Napoli-Fiorentina game, images of the Napoli Ultra were as ubiquitous as the Napoli players. Focus immediately settled on the message printed on his black t-shirt: ‘Speziale Libero:’ Free Speziale, in other words, Antonino Speziale, the Rightist Catania Ultra imprisoned for killing Filippo Raciti. Within hours, the police and the world knew the Ultra’s name: Gennaro de Tommaso, and we were told that he had already been given a five-year ban from entering a soccer stadium — not for his role in getting the match played (much to the benefit of the advertisers) but for wearing an offensive t-shirt.
‘Speziale Libero,’ though, quickly became but a footnote as details of the shooting emerged. The victim was Ciro Esposito, a car washer from a poor Neapolitan neighborhood. Evidently, he and other Napoli fans riding in a bus near the stadium had been ambushed by a group of AS Roma
Ultras, a fight ensued, and the Roma Ultras retreated. In doing so, however, they were overrun by the Napolitani. One of the Romans pulled a gun and fired, hitting Esposito, as he was swarmed and severely beaten. The shooter’s name was Daniele De Santis and he quickly stole the show from de Tommaso and Speziale. De Santis was in fact a longtime AS Roma Ultra, and a notorious one at that.
When Francesco Totti had met with Ultra leaders during the suspended derby, one of them had been De Santis. And not only that, after having been a member of Tradizione e Distinzione, one of the Curva’s most legendary Rightist Ultra groups, he had helped Giuliano Castellino create the now disbanded Padroni di Casa, noteworthy for its former connections to CasaPound Italia. For his part, De Santis lived the life of a devoted fascist, being active in demonstrations and various punitive expeditions against Leftists.
So, as the dust was settling on the 2013–2014 soccer season, we had a Napoli fan shot by a fascist Ultra of AS Roma, and a Napoli Ultra banned for five-years for wearing a shirt asking for freedom for the Catania Ultra convicted of killing Filippo Raciti. Ciro Esposito eventually died from his wounds, and De Santis was sentenced to sixteen years of prison. But the story didn’t end there. For Curva Sud Roma, it was just getting started.
Three days after the ill-fated Coppa Italia final, Roma hosted Juventus. The Curva, however, was in no mood to celebrate, but instead chose to begin the match with thirty minutes of silence in protest of the weeks’ worth of sensational moralizing against soccer violence, hatred, regionalism, parochialism, fascism, and anything else that could be used to tarnish the Ultras. When the thirty minutes had passed, the Curva gave its enemies exactly what it wanted: songs and banners in defense of De Santis. It was the last home game of the season. Thoughts were already on the next season’s games against Napoli.
The first of those games was in Naples and it came and went without incidence, besides the expected banners against Curva Sud Roma and Rome. One read, ‘Every word is in vain: if the opportunity presents itself, there will be no mercy.’ Romans were forbidden from traveling to the game, as the Napolitani would be later in the season for the game in Rome. In the meantime, however, another chapter to the Coppa Italia story had been written, literally. Antonella Leardi, the mother of Ciro Esposito, had written a book about her son, and had become a minor celebrity appearing on talk shows to promote her book and vilify the Ultras. The Curva reacted as one would expect: with derisive horror that a mother would seek to profit from the death of her son. Banners were unfurled throughout the Curva during the long-awaited home game against Napoli: ‘How sad. You make money off the funeral from books and interviews;’ ‘There is one who mourns a son with pain and morals, and one who makes of it a business without dignity. Honor to you Mrs. De Falchi;’385 and ‘After the book, the film.’
After the Roma-Juventus game the previous May James Pallota, chairman of the AS Roma board, had condemned the Curva’s support of De Santis as a ‘defeat for civil society,’ but chose to make the issue one of security rather than immorality, as he was in the process of organizing financial and political support for a new, state of the art multipurpose stadium through which to maximize his profits.
As I previously mentioned, AS Roma was purchased by a group of American investors in 2011. Whereas Calcio Moderno had always been a guiding, ethical narrative for the Ultras, its effects were largely felt as abstractions in Rome. It was seen in the general trends pushing soccer to become a televisual advertising-based event, with little regard for local communities of supporters, but it was always possible to see AS Roma, at the very least, as an unwilling partner in the process — paying its star players as well as comparable players in other, wealthier, teams and leagues — but always teetering on the edge of bankruptcy to do so. When Bologna FC faced being purchased by Americans in 2008, none of the Ultras seemed to care as Bologna’s Ultras are amongst the most bitter enemies of Curva Sud. (The animosity stems from 1996, when the Bolognese named members of Boys Roma to the police after the Romans were seen attacking North African drug dealers after a game in Bologna. Henceforth the Bolognese have been considered by Curva Sud to be spies and servants of the State.) But now AS Roma was to be in the hands of men who admitted to buying the club only to profit from its fans, players, colors, and emblems.
At first the takeover seemed tolerable enough given the unstable situation of the club. After all, a Roma in American hands is better than no Roma at all.386 Thomas DiBenedetto, the head of the consortium that bought the club, was a likable enough man. He was part of the group of American finance capitalists that owns England’s Liverpool FC, and had been vocal in explaining the need to understand and utilize world renowned soccer clubs as multinational brands at the time of that club’s takeover. But he seemed genuinely impressed, and perhaps overwhelmed, by the emotional nature of the Roman support for AS Roma; and oversaw very little change with the club, as its finances had to be sorted out after the takeover. Once all was in line, however, DiBenedetto handed the club’s chairmanship to billionaire James Pallotta, part of the group ownership of the NBA’s Boston Celtics; but where DiBenedetto had been grandfatherly, Pallotta was downright rapacious in his quest to turn AS Roma into a cash machine. He quickly announced a series of deals with Disney and Nike to begin in 2014 that were designed to increase the ‘brand’s’ visibility in America and the world. To that end, he oversaw the redesigning of the club’s beloved shield/crest, simplifying its image so that it would better reproduce on merchandise.
And now Pallotta was watching helplessly as his plans of plunder in the name of Roma were being held ransom by perhaps the only entity that saw itself worthy of such a fight. It must be said that Curva Sud Roma is extremely savvy in its use of the media to spread as well as facilitate its agenda. In Rome from 2006 to 2008, I got a very good sense of how the Ultras used the press to spread awareness of themselves, but perhaps I overlooked how well the Ultras actively manipulated their enemies through the press. The 2007 ‘Odio Napoli’ game is a perfect example. Given the climate at the time, and the incessant baying of the media for a soccer without Ultras, the Curva could have silenced itself as a portent of what that would mean (much as they did after Sandri’s killing). Instead of giving the media what it said it wanted, however, the Ultras gave it what it really wanted: another week’s worth of denigrating the racist, violent, fascist Ultras. Looking back, singing ‘Odio Napoli’ for ninety-minutes was exactly what the Ultras had wanted to do, and certainly even more so because of how much it disturbed the media — which then, from the Ultras’ perspective, got to show itself an active agent in the spreading hegemony of neoliberal multiculturalism. It was, then, a double win, as they stood against the moral force of the strongest nations and corporations on Earth, and then got to be excoriated by the very people — and types of people — they despised.
Likewise, the cheers and banners in support of De Santis, which had at once been a chance to support one their own — and at any rate a Roman being castigated in all of Italy at the expense of Naples — but had also outed the temper of James Pallotta. For his part, Pallotta seemed to know and to enjoy his notoriety amongst the Ultras. From America it was hard to watch, seeing the arrogant billionaire talking about AS Roma as if it were just numbers on an account balance. From Rome it must have looked the same, especially as Pallotta became more and more adamant that Roma be highly profitable as a leader in Calcio Moderno.
Perhaps just as the Ultras expected, Pallotta lost his cool after the banners were displayed criticizing Antonella Leardi as a hypocritical profiteer. On the radio following the game, Pallotta railed against the Ultras:
We are incredibly frustrated and disappointed in some of the actions. We just don’t really have the power in the stadium to stop all of this. We did take away some of the banners — whatever banners that we did see outside before the game, our stewards did — but at the end of the day, the security inside have to choose to take action and we don’t control that
security inside. But in spite of that, it’s just not fair for all of our fans to be tarnished by a few fucking idiots and assholes that hang out in the Curva Sud. And I’m sure that the vast majority of Roma supporters are sick and tired of these fools, and it’s up to all of us together — not just in Rome but in Italy — to put an end to their antics. It’s time we put an end to their antics. We are doing a lot of good things with “Roma Cares” against bullying and violence and racism, and we’ll continue to do that and we’re working very hard at this, sometimes fairly quietly. I am pledging right now $1 million to “Roma Cares” to continue to combat this bullshit that’s going on in Rome by a few, and in Italy by a few. And I’m hoping that we get others to contribute for educational programs to stop all of this crap.
A morning later, those entering AS Roma’s headquarters in Trigoria were greeted to a banner written in English: ‘This fucking idiot gonna pay you mother fucker.’ The Ultras had accepted the challenge. How much they were prepared to fight became apparent later in the day, when the Curva released a response to Pallotta’s moralistic rant:
When your father was just born, we were at Campo Testaccio for any random Roma-Dominante game, and when there was still no trace of you in your father’s balls, we were in Turin for a Roma-Milan that sealed our only relegation. At the time that you were excited by your Boston Celtics, we were drawing 2–2 against Atalanta thanks to Pruzzo, while later — as you cheered for a tip-in — we were celebrating our Roma-Torino and crying for our Roma-Liverpool. At the age of fifty-three you became owner of our Roma and the first thing you did was modify the 1927 club shield, making many wonderful promises that we believed, albeit with the wary eye of a Roman.