Paris like Rome! The boulevards, Villiers-le-bel (small town at the gates of the Capital) like the avenues that surround the Olympic Stadium! The Flaminio Quarter appeared like a dejà vu of the side streets of Genoa in the period of the G8, while in France the ‘arrondissement’ of ’93 seemed to relive the spectre of the revolution of the Banlieues of 2005. The two Capitals struggling with group violence provoked by events which, on first sight, seemed very similar: two adolescents (Moushin and Larami) victims of a crash between a mini-motor and a French Police car; Gabriele Sandri died in an Arezzo motorway restaurant, following Police intervention in an attempt to stop a fight between football fans.
Beyond the video tapes and the bulletins of the injured (almost stifling the newspaper accounts) no other element seemed – at a cursory observation – to compare the sudden return of the revolt in the peripheries of Paris, with the violence of the Italian Ultrà. In reality, the analysis of the first event allows us to understand the roots and the evolution of the other phenomenon. The GNOSIS review has already dedicated space dealing with both the world of Ultrà (October – December, 2004) and the revolution of the Banlieues (January-March, 2006), but an analytical verification of the phenomena – focussed, above all, on the evolution of the violence in the world of football – could be integrated with what has been sustained in these preceding articles.
The observation of the return, although fleeting, of the revolt in the Banlieues permits us to confirm what emerged in November, 2005: the riots saw as the protagonists, groups of unorganized young people, belonging to the so-called third generation of the North-African immigrants, who grew-up in the Parisian hinterland and who – for years –
live the difficulty of a social, ethnic, cultural and economic “integration system”, which is blocked or near to absolute failure. Only a few observers – in tracing the revolution of the Banlieues – have re-evoked the French ’68, the major part of them, more correctly, have remembered the civil disorders of Los Angeles in 1992 and – above all – the ethnic protests of the 60’s, which inflamed the ghettoes of certain United States’ metropolis.
They were extremely hard protests, carried forward by the coloured minority, with the objective of gaining a welfare system which could close the social-economic gap with the white majority. The bands, which in November, 2005, forced the suburbs of the French Capital under a curfew, were not structured on ideological or hierarchical levels: on the contrary, the rebels refused any attempt to enclose the movement within a Marxian or religious perspective.
In fact, the protesters, although to a large extent Islamic, never referred to this belief to justify the actions of the protest. They promoted extremely elementary concepts (and, therefore, easily assimilated by all); the social marginalization seemed an unalterable fact. The ineffectual integration policies (carried forward chiefly by the schools), the Police represented the French society’s principal instrument to maintain the Banlieues in a chronic state of cultural and economic anaesthesia. An apparently dormant social area, but which was able to generate, in the face of the accidental deaths of two youths, a wish for violence and vendetta against the entire society. A wish that to all appearances resembled that of the Ultrà groups, which “swore retaliation for the death of Gabriele Sandri”.
But how is it possible that a passionate football lover, who should concern himself with the physical form of his centre-forward, or of the model chosen by the trainer, is ready to transform himself into an “urban guerrilla” because of a tragic event which happened outside of the Stadium?
To realistically understand how a fan can become a violent fan, it is necessary to avoid analyses based on stereotypes and elementary sociologisms ( instruments held by some to be optimal passepartout to interpret every type of group violence), but, over and above this, it is opportune to free oneself from both the simplifications, and the interpretive complications.
And for the first thing, it is useful to remember that when the Ultràs become “violent”, we are in front of a socially organized aggressiveness and, therefore, it is inopportune to try to interpret such conduct by referring to psychological logic (or temperament) of the single fan. In fact, a careful analysis points up, that those involved in the violence connected to sport, are not – in general – more aggressive, more ignorant, more socially maladjusted than other young people who live other associative realities. The hypothesis, therefore, according to which only those who have existential problems (based on consistent elements of psychopathy and/or sociopathy) is not very tenable, even if – for the major part of public opinion – it is difficult to digest the idea that those who attacked the car of Filippo Raciti are young people with psychological characteristics very similar to the greater part of their contemporaries.
Another common area to debunk is that of believing it is only in recent times that violence has entered the world of football. In the distant past, football actually was the sport of gentlemen par excellence: it was, in fact, practised exclusively in the British Colleges, by the stiff offspring of the ‘upper class’ and the stands that hosted the fans were veritable schools of fair play. But in a very short time, football underwent a different evolution from that of the nobler cricket. It gathered always more ardent enthusiasts and was transformed into a discipline for highly paid professionals. An unexpected opportunity for the youngsters of the working class who – through football – could hope to conquer fame and wealth. A social upheaval for the rigid British model and for a competition which becomes: “…. An activity for gentlemen played by ruffians while its most direct derivative, rugby, becomes a sport for ruffians played by gentlemen.” A popular maxim which, at a distance of more than a century, cannot be refuted!
If in the games area fair play is very soon neglected, in the stands it disappears even more rapidly and, only occasionally, finds a place among the fans.
For example, in Britain, the year 1896 is remembered as the most violent year for the newly-born football. Due to unfavourable results (or referee conduct) groups of supporters armed with clubs took aim at the judges and the opposite team, and when the Police arrived to calm the scuffles, the attackers turned on the dismayed ‘bobbies’. In the United Kingdom, the violence of the ancestors of the modern Ultràs was, furthermore,
very soon contaminated by political and religious conflicts. In fact, the press of the time, remembers that – in 1909 – during a game in the Scottish championships (the one between the two Glasgow teams: the Celtic Catholics and the Protestant Rangers) a real war broke out between the two sets of fans, resulting in the destruction of a good part of the Stadium. The confrontation them moved outside of the sports grounds, with attacks on the residential areas of the two communities.
The Glasgow episode has not remained an isolated case and represents the first transposition – in modern times – of what seven hundred year ago happened between the small Contrada (Quarter) groups during the Palio of Siena.
If the popularity of football has, in such a short time, reached all corners of the earth, just as rapidly, it appears evident that this world (and that of its supporters) depicts, by far the largest collective system able to trigger off, in the masses, the most extreme emotional behaviour: that is, the pleasure of victory added to that of the overpowering of the adversary/enemy. A thought, at the same time elementary, and full of meaning, which has generated its icons and its myths. In fact, visiting the Anfield Stadium of Liverpool, one is impressed by the gigantic bronze statue of a man at the entrance, who, with open arms, welcomes the fans of the ‘reds’. The statue is of Bill Shankly, Liverpool trainer from 1959 to 1974. A legendary figure, known all over the world for having coined the aphorism which in a few words embodies the entire philosophy: “Some think that football is a question of life or death. I do not agree. I can assure you it is very, very much more!”
An hyperbolic statement if you will, perhaps coined to stimulate the already “ardent” football environment of Liverpool, but perhaps, it is not by chance that the supporters of the reds had been judged by the UEFA as the “worst of Europe” and, in 1985, one of the contributing causes of the Heysel tragedy.

If the phrase of the fiery Scottish trainer appears exaggerated to many, other illustrious thinkers have described this game in as many other lyrical ways. Albert Camus (who, as a young man was an excellent goalkeeper, had to interrupt his career due to tuberculosis). He loved to repeat: “Everything I know of life, I learned from football”. While the writer, George Orwell, of Scottish origin, was so fascinated by football to the point of writing with emphasis: “Football is not kicking a ball, it is combat”. How the game of football, in such a few years, could have supplanted all the other team games is one of the anthropological mysteries of the modern era. Football, for the Ethologist, Desmond Morris, embodies – more than the other competition sports – a representation (in our collective subconsciousness) of the ancient hunt. If in baseball the moments of pause are too frequent and it lacks the effect of the pursuit of the pack behind the prey (the football); if in rugby the play is too rigid and schematic ; if in American football, there are too many interruptions, in football, it is the opposite, dead moments are rare, the sequence of actions are continuous, the tension, in the most exciting games, is without interruption, and the adversary players are considered simply as obstacles placed between the prey (the football) and the objective to be reached.

by www.cas.lancs.ac.uk.

This ancestral rite, celebrated by “players/heroes/warriors”, disproportionately involves the fans who, through slogans, insults, threats and hysterical behaviour, transfer to themselves, the tension of the team they support. According to Morris: “If this emotional pressure were to be eliminated, the strongly symbolic significance of the tribal rituals would be lost: their profound sense would be crushed. The only possibility consists in maintaining this tension, this participative intensity and, at the same time, to suffocate its extreme and destructive forms of expression. The trouble is that when a fire burns, it is difficult to control and the football tribe has yet to invent an extinguisher suitable to all its needs”. The attempt to place the relations between “football, team, fans and violence” within a scientific framework, has stimulated even the experts of mass phenomena. According to the sociological model of Marxist orientation (related to the Frankfurt School), football represents a marginal manifestation of the modern society, which is converted into a “magnificent opium” for oppressed peoples and represents a glaring symbol of modern alienation. According to this sociological paradigm, the Ultrà groups are nothing more than the last stage of a collective evolution of a process of metamorphosis in the relation mass/violence, amply treated – in 1921 – by leaders in the field like Gustave Le Bon, in the work the Psychology of the Crowds. According to Le Bon, in the crowd (or in semi-organized groups like the Ultràs) the individual conscious personality disappears, while the emotions and ideas go along one direction only, forming a sort of collective soul. Such entity, according to the French psycho- sociologist, is almost always inferior to the single individual, and it
is characterized by impulsiveness, violence, ferocity, but also for the enthusiasm and heroism peculiar to the primitive social groups. “The crowds”, Le Bon loved to repeat, “can be fired with enthusiasm for glory and honour, and can be pulled into war without bread and without arms”.
If the evocative definition of Gustave Le Bon (matured on the crest of personal experience of observations of the uprisings in the City of Paris in 1871) can be matched with both the revolution of the Banlieues, and the mass violence of certain Ultrà groups, it is still not sufficient to allow a complete reply to the fundamental problems: why, only in football, do we find such compact and extended groups involved and occupied full-time in the support of a team? Why do people come to the point of thinking that “to be an Ultrà” is the absolute priority of their existence?
Anyone of the reasons identified by the authorized personnel and by the scholars of the various disciplines concur in clarifying these processes (processes amply treated in the first number of the Gnosis Review, October, 2004), but three aspects (simple and elementary in their essence)
seem – in the final analysis – to create the conditions so that football originates that collective spirit in the masses: that sub-culture which leads to a sense of identity and personal value through the recognition/fusing with one’s own kind.
The first aspect is so obvious that it appears self-evident: the exaggerated support, organized and of a group, occurs only if the sport competitor is a team and not a single individual. This does not mean that in the individual sports (e.g. tennis, boxing, athletics etc.,) we do not find those wild fans who follow every action of their athletic heroes, but their passion – when it transcends into the “psycho-emotional identification” – is interrupted with the conclusion of the champion’s career.
The second factor is that of “territory”. The team is denominated in function of the town, the town quarter, the village, or the city where it originated and evolved. In this way a close relation is created with the inhabitants of the territorial unit from where the first athletes and the most passionate fans emerge.
If the team represents an ever-increasing area and rises to important sport levels, the athlete/territory relation diminishes, but – in the meantime – the number of supporters increases: supporters who become always more dogmatically fanatical. In this way an extremely strong sense of identification and belonging is created, which in cases of extraordinary and epic victories (at both national and international levels), go beyond the “territorial” collocation, and spread to zones which are hundreds of kilometres away from the area of the team’s origin.
But it is the third factor of “time”, which – added to the preceding factors - explains why the football fan has developed in this way and, in the final analysis, how the phenomenon of the Ultràs originated. While, as has been seen, in the individual sports the “passionate support” finishes with the end of the athlete’s career (obviously, the myth and the acute memory remain, but in this case it no longer signifies impassioned fans, employed full-time in following their “heroes”), but in team sports with strong “territorial” connotation, the team could, theoretically, live in any time and create a relation with supporters which is passed on from one generation to another.
This does not mean to say that the endeavours of the single players are suffocated by the passion for the team (for example, one remembers teams – as in the case of the Cagliari of Gigi Riva – for the sole presence of one first-rate champion), but the “group” factor and the sense of
belonging outlive the professional life of a football player. Unlike ideologies and political alignments, which can survive decades to then be transformed or disappear (the political evolution in Italy in the last fifty years is proof of same), teams like Real Madrid or the SPAL, or Manchester, or like the most ancient team in Italy (Genoa) survive events. With the passage of time, champions come and go, the victories are often ancient memories, but the fan does not change: dogmatic, indestructible, not in the least worn out by time and defeats. As an example, it is sufficient to remember that among the people, in Italy, who have passed the age of 60, the number of Turin supporters is considerable. They are fans who have never seen the provincial capital of Piedmont and have not participated in a triumph of the Turin Football Club for almost 30 years: and yet their passion – born during the heroic deeds of the “Great Turin” (a team which was able to win five championships consecutively, before they tragically died in an aircraft disaster) – has not been tarnished by time and is passed down, with sometimes “epic” strains, to the new generation.
This extraordinary fan/team relation exists only in football. In the other
team sports (perhaps because they are little rooted in the territory or because the vital need of sponsorship leads a representative to continually change “name” and social colours) the Ultrà phenomenon presents itself, sometimes, with extremely aggressive traits, without, however, reaching the extension and historical intensity found in football.
But can a reconstruction of the socio-emotional motivations, which are at the base of the Ultrà phenomenon, be sufficient to explain the foundation of group violence which, always more, seems to belong to the sub-culture of the “clan” and for this reason disciplined by rules like those of the “feud” and of the ethnic or political reprisals?
All this becomes understandable if one accepts the hypothesis that we are in front of, in reality, a group of “different fans” – different from the more moderate supporters, who share iron rules, often dictated by unwritten codes (coming from, in some cases, a charismatic leader), a shared symbology (emblems and colours of the team), factors of recognition (scarves, flags, banners) group rites with strong symbolic content (choirs, choreography, dance, search for the t-shirt of one’s own champion at the end of the game etc.,) a story of the past – as Desmond Morris sustains – of “heroic deeds of which every member is, at one and the same time, witness and protagonist”.
Often the entrance of a new initiate into the Ultrà group is sanctioned by rites with which the neophyte must demonstrate to possess things in common with the group; reliability, daring, sometimes an “ ideological manly severity” and, in certain contexts, ability to attack and know how to defend oneself against the “enemies”. Almost all groups require from the affiliates respect for the hierarchy and the overcoming of any cultural, economic and social differences among the members. Furthermore, in a microcosm, Ultràs create two precise dynamics in the collective spirit. On the one side: the flattening of the single to the ideas and principles of the group: on the other side, an assimilation is created that “the others” i.e. those outside of the group, are alien. If “the others” are also supporters of an “adversary” team, they automatically becomes an enemy and a threat to the group. If the outsiders belong to the Forces of Law and Order – and oppose the demonstration of the Ultrà entity – besides being an enemy, they become “detestable individuals” and, therefore, are treated as such. A “subversive energy”, ready to explode in the face of any act of the “enemy”, which is unilaterally evaluated by the Ultràs as “unjustified and discriminatory”.
But is every fan a potential Ultrà? Are all Ultràs predisposed to transform themselves into subversives, ready to attack adversary fans, police and carabinieri?
Also in this case, it is necessary to avoid over-simplifications and interpretational preconceptions. But if it appears misleading to hold that whoever follows – in a more or less heated way – the affairs of his own team is predisposed to start up the phenomena described by Le Bon, it cannot be omitted that the “trade of the Ultras” (and, sometimes, it is a real trade) originates and proliferates within the “support that is carried to extremes”.
The “principle” which the criminological science applies in the epidemiological research on the “drug” phenomenon, is valid in this ambit. In fact, the assertion appears realistic that not all users of “light” drugs become users of “heavy” drugs, but all those who use narcotics like heroine have – in the past – certainly used substances like hashish.
Similarly, it could be stated that not all fans become Ultràs, not all the Ultràs are “violent”, and not all the Ultràs (more or less violent) profess extremist and antagonistic political ideologies, but that, certainly, the violent supporters (and/or political extremists) grow up within the most immense and composite world of the so-called “world of the curves” (the spectator places behind the goals). A kind of “socio-demographic pyramid” with a base of about 20 million people, who, in Italy, in one way or other, follow the events of a football team. At the summit of the pyramid, we find a constellation of groups ready (and sometimes trained) to carry out attacks like those that happened in front of the Via Guido Reni Barracks in Rome or in front of the Massimino Stadium in Catania.
But how is it composed and how widespread is the world of the fans and the sub-typology of the Ultràs in our Country? In May-June of 2005, the Demeter, on behalf of the Polis-Limes Review made a survey – on a representative sample of the population – with the aim of delineating the “football fan” profile in Italy. The results of the research, made by Fabio Bordignon, Luigi Ceccarin and Ilvo Diamanti, were published in the supplement No. 3/2005 of the LIMES Review.
From the relevant data emerges that one out of every two Italians (43% of the subjects over 14 years of age) follow football and is a supporter of a team. The remaining 57% of the population is completely uninterested in the world of football. The researchers divided the fans into three categories on the basis of different levels of enthusiasm in sustaining their football interest.
Around 25% of the fans declare that they follow the activities of their team in a “moderate” way (probably, every once in a while they watch a match on the television; they get heated in a “discussion among fans”
only if they have to; have hardly ever bought a daily sports newspaper etc.). Four out of ten fans interviewed judged themselves involved in the events of their own team (among them we certainly find those who go to the Stadium and are well informed on the affairs of their own club). These are people who – in the case of a triumph by their team – do not distain to participate in the mass demonstrations of the victory and become – for a few days – particularly heated fans.
Finally, the remaining 35% of the fans interviewed by the Demeter declared themselves “militant” supporters. If the survey should be confirmed by other public opinion investigations, the universe of the so-called “militant” fans should be estimated between 5/6 million people.
Certainly, from among this substantial mass of people come those who consider themselves Ultràs. However, it is necessary to underline that only a minimum part of the “militant” fans is ready to transform itself into formidable hooligans, otherwise the problem – both from the social point of view and public peace and order – would have devastating dimensions. Furthermore, it is obvious that not all the Ultràs are responsible for violence. Often, between the more organized groups, there are subjects who deal only with the transfer of fans for the away games, preparing the choreography, animating the private radio stations, 24 hours around the clock, expatiating on the favourite team.
The most ardent fans are (according to samples examined on behalf of the Polis-Limes), prevalently male, under the age of 34 year, mostly students and workers. The social extraction of the so-called “militant” fans is composite, but in the case of the Ultràs “duri e puri” (roughly: ‘plain and tough’) is almost always middle-lower class. This affirmation is indirectly confirmed by the fact that the Ultrà Movement, for some time, has been campaigning against privileging, i.e. the high price of the tickets and season tickets. Many of the “assaults” made in the past, outside of the stadiums had the intention of overwhelming the Police and entering the stadium without a ticket. Furthermore, during the transfer of fans, small robberies are very frequent, particularly in the motorway restaurants and cafés. According to the authors of these robberies, it is, in reality, a kind of “proletarian cost” finalized to contain the expenses – judged prohibitive - that the supporter must bear.
Another significant element that emerged from the survey is, the fact, that, frequently, who “roots for a football team is also one who feels antipathy, sometimes even hatred, towards an ‘enemy’ formation, and towards the fans that it represents”. This sentiment of “rooting against” is, obviously, more frequent and intense, (62%) among the so-called “militant” fans and, in some circumstances, exceeds in emotional intensity, even the “rooting for…”.
The research of Bordignon, Ceccarini and Diamanti could not dispense with trying to verify the eventual correlation between the football “passion” and the political one. The information obtained underlined how the so-called “militant” fans, besides being more involved at a political level, are also closer to the so-called Maximalist ideology.
If, in fact, among those who are uninterested in the world of football, the so-called “disappointed and disillusioned” with the politic, represent the highest percentage (38.7%). Among those who are “militant” fans, such percentage falls to 26%. The passion towards the world of politics of the “militant” fans must not induce the belief that there is among them a “high” level of sociological, economic and ideological elaboration. The attraction is often instinctive, superficial, above all, linked to an assonance of language, symbolism, slogan, and to the presence of an enemy – common to both the extremisms – which are the Institutions. However, if – up until the 80’s – certain political sectors tried to politicize, in a propositional sense, the “curves” and the “instinctual energy” which they showed, in these last years, the process has been reversed. In fact, the professional politicians, always more frequently, draw on the language of the “curves”. A process which someone reasonably defined as the “footballization of politics”, as opposed to the “politicization of football”, typical of the first years of the 70’s.
As was shown in the article in the October, 2004, issue of this Review, the Ultrà phenomenon has undergone – in the last decades – a sort of political metamorphosis, with an increase among those fans who go in the direction of the extreme Right ideology. According to a census of the Central Direction of the Prevention Police (DCPP) of the Ministry of the Interior, at the beginning of 2005, compared to approximately 250 Ultrà organizations which define themselves “politically neutral”, there are 84 (18.8%) which recognize themselves in the Marxist-Leninist ideology, while 115 groups (25.7%) identify with the political conceptions of the Right Extremism. Nevertheless, it is useful to underline that when the Ultràs break out in violence, the “political/ideological” element, almost always, takes second place with respect to the “belonging” element: fans against the enemy for “campanilista” (exaggerated attachment to one’s hometown) reasons.
The politically aligned Ultrà organizations, even if in opposition, seem to have found, in these last years, reasons for a kind of alliance outside and inside the stadiums with respect to a common enemy: the Forces of Law and Order. The clashes with these last, represent by now, a major part of the episodes involving the Ultras, while the battles between adversary team supporters are always less.

photo Ansa

In this context, perhaps it is not by chance that the last two victims (Raciti and Sandri) were registered following the clashes between these two entities. The increase of the contrast between Ultrà and the Police derives, most probably, from both a major presence (and effectiveness) of the Police and from a growing pressure (and intolerance) of the Institutions and society regarding fan violence. The laws promulgated in the last years, provided for always more severe measures, as well as, an increase of power conferred upon the Authorities of Public Security. This has determined a major impatience among the Ultràs, hostility which allows the overcoming of any political discrimination and football rivalry, notwithstanding how deeply rooted, being extrinsic in the face of a “new outside threat”.

The presence of an outside and common enemy, (the Institutions with their “armed branch”) has brought about – paradoxically – the birth of self-awareness and identity for the entire Italian Ultrà Movement.
The sociological and semantic process is the same: it needs an enemy to come into existence, to affirm a real identity; it needs an enemy in order to continue to exist. Such process is so advanced that a sociologist like Franco Ferrarotti – author of the paper “To the Last Stadium” – does not exclude the birth of a “transversal Party of the Ultràs”. A “Party” which wants to impose its own “political agenda” in its dealings with the Institutions and which is able, in very little time, (through the utilization of the SMS and the Internet) to organize an “effective protest action” and following the death of Gabriele Sandri, “adequate military” attacks on the Forces of Law and Order.
An “Ultrà Party” (composed, according to recent studies of the DCPP, of not more than 75,000 people, but able to find moral support in a larger universe), certainly not co-ordinated, and with autonomous structures, but which moves in a linear way with respect to the “common enemy”. This led to the fact that numerous attempts at mediation between the Police Forces and Ultrà resulted almost fruitless. For some time now, the Ultrà sees as a “spy” anyone of their movement who has contacts (or makes agreements) with the Police, even if these contacts are aimed at guaranteeing security during the transfers of the fans. Furthermore, the irritation towards the Police becomes an insurmountable barrier if the hostility is supported by the political/ideological component.
Extreme Left formations (for example, the Leghorn B.A.L.) or extreme Right (which counts followers close to Forza Nuova, such as the group that signs itself BISL Basta Infami Solo Lame) (very roughly translated ‘enough of the loathsome behaviour, now only blades’) refuses, in fact, on principle, the idea that one can come to terms with the representatives of the State. Even if this “Party to be” is not yet evolved in typically “subversive” practices, certain signs come from the Ultrà-Web. A while ago, a kind of manifesto of the “Ultrà Resistance Front” was carried in the official site of the Leghorn B.A.L. (organizations which gathered the fan groups of the Extreme Left of Terni, Ancona, Leghorn, Savona and Massa). Written in the site was:“… The Front cannot and must not limit itself to acting only in the stadiums. The social commitment must be a primary objective; for this, positions on the present political situations will be taken, participating (where possible) in the demonstrations as autonomous fragments, which will adopt their own line. Imagine what could have happened if, at Genoa, a fragment of Left Ultras had presented itself, coordinated by an independent line and organized like a Sunday procession … imagine what impression it would have had on the masses and on all the demonstrators ...”.
The difficulty of maintaining positions on the part of the Extreme Left Ultràs is confirmed by the official communiqué of the 6th International Anti-racist Convention (RAI) (7-9 July, 2006). This communiqué offered the picture of a movement in retreat, in extreme difficulty in the face of the Extreme Right affirmation. The convention recorded a reduced attendance compared to the previous conventions. The cause is due to the defection of some “curves” (the “comrades” of Venice did not attend; the fan groups of Perugia were banned for not having been able to effectively counteract the penetration of the Forza Nuova in the bleachers of the “Curi”), and to the dissolution of certain “historical” formations of the Left fan groups. In the cited International Anti-racist Convention it was decided that the Ultrà Resistance Front would be structured, locally, in territorial Committees of the Ultrà Resistance. These should meet before the beginning of the football championships to agree and define a
“course of common struggle”, against both the opposing political organizations and against the system of the “repression “.
Furthermore, the recent 2006 crisis (known as Calciopoli (roughly meaning ‘football corruption’) produced multiple and diverse effects on the Ultrà world.
In particular, the scandal appeared as the most patent confirmation of the “rot” which poisons the sport of football: economic interests, television rights, doping, fixed games, sport malfeasance. In light of all this, Ultrà feels authorized to continue the fight against an always more discredited system and against the Institutions which, in their eyes, seem collusive and without legitimacy. “Calciopoli” has also accentuated, where it already existed, the contrasts between Ultrà and management. In this regard we can mention the renewed opposition of the Lazio Extreme Right fans, (the Hardcore), to President Lotito, considered the first person responsible for the ordeals suffered by the team. Opposition which, in some contexts, has reached models more similar to organized crime.
Lastly, the footballs scandal has reinforced the Ultrà idea that the defeat of their own team has little to do with the sport event: they live with the constant suspicion of plots hatched against them. For Ultrà (as for almost all of the impassioned fans), the favourable decisions are considered their due and are taken for granted; those against them are fruit of someone’s choice or machination. This has led to a deep sense of “immunity”. In fact, after the scandal of the “fixed games”, any Ultrà, anyone, feels in the right to violently contest the decisions taken by the referee and his assistants, and is convinced – at the same time – of performing an “act of justice”. An occasion of “social justice” not to be lost, as much for the Extreme Right formations as for the Extreme Left. The risk – in such an ambit – is that the anti-system groups, already rooted in the fan followings, may attempt to raise, qualitatively and quantitatively, the level of violence, giving it a clear “subversive” connotation and that a guerrilla phenomenon, like the one recorded after the death of Gabriele Sandri, becomes a practice to be used also with low-profile “provocations”.
It is necessary, however, not to over-accentuate the “risks” of a “subversive” stream from the Ultrà Movement. Indicative in this sense, is the substantial failure of the attempt to involve, on the emotional wave of the Sandri homicide, the organized fans” in the “no-global” demonstration, at Genoa, 17th November, 2007. An involvement hoped for by the leader of the ‘disobedient’, Luca Casarini, with a declaration of ‘availability’ of the Movement with regard to the fan groups. Nevertheless, this must not make one think that the contrast between Ultrà and the Police is – at a future time – destined to dwindle – because episodes of provocation by the more radical and “politicized” fringes are not only possible, but very probable.
In this context, it is useful to remember that in the stadiums, today, it is not yet possible to carry out an effective control action because, notwithstanding the numerous initiatives taken, mainly, following the Raciti homicide, the curves remains territory in the hands of the most extreme fringes of Ultrà. A real and substantial change in the fan/violence relation must involve the entire world of football. A world in which the young, often, find again the same abnormalities and pathologies of the society in which they live and where the players themselves perform, with their provocative behaviour, actions which are “damaging” and sportively incorrect.
The football society, in the power of their business and to guarantee a kind of stadiums pax, facilitate, more and more, these same Ultrà groups, to then promptly deny any kind of relation with them: resulting in the explosion of serious incidents. Football is a reality where (and this is a totally Italian aspect) the majority of sports journalists speak of this sport as if the actions were “war strategies”. Unfortunately, in this way, there is the risk of rendering true the phrase with which – more than sixty years ago – Winston Churchill labelled the Italians: “…They lose a football match as if it were a war and lose a war as if it were a football match.”