From the clashes between fans of Rome and Naples at the autogrill to those before the Serie C derby between Cesena and Rimini: the new wave of accidents is an issue that football cannot set aside
The great illusion
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Let’s confess it: we were deluded. Just the long months of the desert stadiums of the Covid era made us understand how much football without people doesn’t make much sense. We deluded ourselves that this awareness would lead to change. Instead, here is the script that is always the same and brings the theme of away fans to the surface. Football has managed to reduce incidents in and around the stadium, but it proves vulnerable when a part of its ‘sociality’ moves elsewhere. We are convinced that the stadiums of the future, with their modernity and their technology, and here Italy’s delay is chronic, will allow much more to identify and isolate the violent. But outside? Thus the same film as always risks being aired: on the one hand public order measures that could lead to new bans, on the other the complaints of those who speak of rights denied to people who are not violent and perhaps would like to take advantage of football to a trip with a group of friends and who find themselves stranded by the madness of the violent. The good thing, which is the bad thing, is that basically both points of view are understandable. But precisely this makes the dilemma all the more frustrating.
The malaise
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The problem does not arise from going to the stadium, but the stadium is one of the houses of a social malaise which in some parts of our communities poisons relationships between people and makes violence an easy language to draw upon. However, this cannot work as an alibi. Football and politics must feel the problem, not delude themselves into reducing it perhaps by riding the always valid refuge of the “violent few”. The violent may be few but unfortunately they have an attractive capacity, to create an atmosphere that is felt in football events even when, fortunately in most cases, there are no crime episodes to record. So let’s try above all not to get used to it, not to get used to it, not to think that yesterday’s scenes could be a physiological price to pay which is inevitably (but why?) part of the football planet.
January 9 – 10:01
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