Re: Serie A Thread - 2010/11 Season
edmundo said:
This makes it very hard to understand why there are such indicents with Balotelli, why do certain fans keep chanting bile like "You can't be Italian and Black" ? It's not like Italy is massivly split in terms of race, why do people get these ideas ?
because racism is not the issue. those juventus fans who "booed" balotelli are the very same ones who love sissoko..... those cagliari fans who booed eto'ò a few weeks back are the very same ones who consider suazo their hero! it's so obvious and evident... u can't not get it.
behind each of those acts there's a very specific agenda.... an agenda wich has nothing to do with racism....... it's about money and leverage.
infact let me use abou's post to make this point more clear.
James Richardson in one of the recent Football Weekly podcasts made the point of how football and politics are very closely linked in Italy and that certain right-wing groups use football to broadcast their political view-points.
indeed. but it's not about "broadcasting or propaganding your ideas"... it's about looking bigger and more representative than they really are.
like i said, extreme right is pretty much dead in italy. they're so weak they were "absorbed" by bigger (and moderated) parties. they have absolutely no political power whatsoever as they don't even have a single representant in our parliament.
so what's the next best thing to being powerful and representative?
looking as if u were powerful and representative.
and what better chance to do that than a football match? the football events' visibility is absolutely perfect to magnify each and every message.... u just need 20, 30 idiots of your group to mix with the fans in the stadium and deploy a racist banner or to boo a black player...... and here u are, u're 1st page material on every newspaper. such a great achievement with such a little effort, it's almost too good to be true.
but it's not just about politics.
criminal organizations take advantage of this situation aswell. do u remember those liverpool fans that were attacked by some bastards in napoli just a few weeks ago? well, last week it turned out that
those bastards were not even fans or ultras.... they were some camorra muscles, sent around the city on that specific day, with the specific purpose to embarass napoli's city board and napoli's major Rosa Russo Jervolino (wich belongs to the left party). napoli is going through a very tricky situation. the city badly needs new garbage dumps, but camorra (for those who don't know it, camorra is a very big criminal organization, almost as powerful as mafia; mafia operates in sicily, camorra in campania) built a racket on garbage in the last few years, so they are trying to create as much troubles as possible to napoli's major, in order to have she change her mind about the garbage issue.
they sent 13 thugs around the city (pretending to be napoli ultras) with the specific purpose of finding and attacking liverpool fans.....
an europa league match against a top club like liverpool.... what better chance to get leverage!
and it's not even only about big criminal organizations either.....
some times, some ultras groups themselves decide to take advantage of their "bargaining power".
u obviously know how the "
strict liability" rule works, no? if the fans cause troubles at the stadium, then the club (and not the fans) gets punished with closed door matches. it's a very common sanction... it's supposed to "hit" the fans for their bad behaviour.... but it actually damages the club much more than the fans themselves. because each closed door match deprive the club of millions of euros (the tickets related incomes). that gives small ultras groups huge leverage.
and some times they used this badly conceived rule as a weapon against their own club. here's an example:
a few years back a few leaders of some lazio ultras groups asked lotito free seasonal tickets for every ultras and dealership for lazio related products (wich means they asked lotito to give them for free the concession to open "lazio stores" in roma and sell lazio stuff.... shirts, scarves and so on) without paying anything to the club..... lotito ovbiously refused to accept. so they started an anti-lotito campaign every sunday at the stadium..... but that wasn't enough to have lotito changing his mind, so they took it to the next level. they started booeing black players and showing racists and fascist banners during the matches. the federation punished the club with some closed door matches......
the rest of the world saw some crazy pseudo-fascist scum..... but the truth is that wasn't about racism, fascism or politics.... that was a "negotiation"... or, to use a much more appropriate word, an attempt of extortion. those bastards were trying to force lotito to give them what they wanted by destroying the club's image and by having lotito loosing millions in tickets (because of the closed door matches).
theese are just a few examples, i could go on for days.
bottom line, saying italy has a problem with racism just because of the actions of a few dozen\hundreds thugs, is extremely shortsighted.
in other countries, like usa or england or germany, sport events and stadia are well under control. and that's why criminal organizations or small group of thugs or small extreme right associations can't take advantage of sport events to magnify their message and get leverage.
here in italy instead (like i already said), u can do pretty much everything in a stadium (and in the surroundings of a stadium) and get away with it. that gives those people a chance to use football's huge visibility to their own advantage.
feels like a half century ago. What's happened to Perugia then? 
