All football matches have been stopped until further notice in the whole of Italy. Last Thursday, a senior police officer was killed in Catania by rioting youths (minorenne) who put a bomb through the open window of his police car. Inside the stadium the usual mayhem (unarmed because of police vigilance) was taking place; the attack outside the ground seems to have been planned because of the efficiency with which 'fans' are processed into matches.
When a political aspirant to office names his political alliance 'Forza Italia' and, after years of some of the most corrupt governance - often openly criminal - Italy has ever known (which is saying quite a lot) on losing an election he had thought had been rigged for him to win threatens to 'descend into the piazza', then the regularly expressed belief that football is the modern version of hunters and forest guards and other armed but barely acceptable civil groupings is confirmed.
Prodi and Amato have reacted with astonishing speed, determination, and political nous to Berlusconi's at arms' length attempt to disrupt the civil order. We must expect more and worse as his March trial (and that of British Cabinet Minister Tessa Jowell's estranged husband David Mills) nears.
Political violence comes in many guises; this time it wears football strip.
6 comments:
Do you mean it was Berlusconi who commisioned the riot?
Do you mean it was Berlusconi who commisioned the riot?
that's appalling - it hadn't had any news coverage i'm aware of here til today (and then i only looked for it having read about it on TTL).
sounds like he's following through on an undertaking giulsie.
Giules, Not that Berlusconi commissioned the riot but that there is a responsive, football-organized, mostly male, mostly average-wage or lower, underclass that responded to a political party called Forza Italia and its values; when the football club-owning Berlusconi lost to Prodi he threatened to 'scendere in piazza'. Him and whose army? The football extreme right- organized army is a reasonable answer, but Prodi and the estimable Dottor Sottile read their game too fast.
There is ample evidence that the extreme right BNP recruits and draws strength from the English football crowds. The first thing right-wing violence has to find is a force; football and its structures and enormous economic power is a good source.
At lunch, looking at the telegiornale, it was remarked," Se non e' vero e' ben trovato".
On 18 December 2006 the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, stated that he did "not preclude the possibility that the Vatican, in the future, could put together a football team of great value, that could play on the same level as Juventus, Roma, Inter Milan and Sampdoria".
The mind boggles. Is the team to be recruited from Swiss Guards, clergy bishops cardinals and Vatican Museum wardens? Are they going to wear shorts, frocks or short frocks, with or without knickers? Helmets and alabards allowed into the stadium through metal detectors and turnstiles? and where is the Vatican stadium going to be built, in the Vatican Gardens? Is praying for victory cheating? Or corrupting empires with indulgences?
Not many people know that Cardinal Bertone followed up his suggestion by setting up the Clericus Cup (sic), with 16 footbal teams from various Seminaries, among which a Vatican team. The Cup is due to start later in February, unaffected by the ban on public matches decreed by Prodi and Amato (except for the only six well equipped stadiums, not accessible to the Clericus Cup).
Are Vatican football hooligans to be forgiven or indeed rewarded with plenary indulgences, or will they have to do extra penance for killing policemen?
how can they do headers with the silly hats?
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