Catania – Palermo, Ten Months On
By Vanda Wilcox • Dec 4th, 2007 • Category: Uncategorized • 6 responses
Editor’s note: Most of you will have noticed that we often linked to Rome-based blogger Spangly Princess during the recent crisis in Italy. Well, she’ll now be writing regularly for Pitch Invasion, and today brings us an update on the Catania-Palermo rivalry, ten months on from the death of a policeman that marked the previous crisis in Italy.
Last Sunday, Catania beat Palermo 3-1 in what is one of Italian football’s most high-risk encounters. Given the ban on away fans, it was strictly a red and blue affair inside the stadium. The game passed off peaceably enough apart from a brief incident outside, where eggs and oranges were thrown at the Palermo team coach as it arrived – clearly even in times of strife Italians like to promote local produce, and Sicilians are very proud of their oranges.
A banner was displayed inside the ground reading “Catania boys are fans of peace and legality”, so perhaps the chaps outside were just trying rather ineptly to make a cake for the visiting team.
The relative calm is worthy of mention since the last time this match was played at Catania’s Massimino stadium was exactly ten months ago, on Friday 2 February: the riots which followed left a man dead and brought the whole of Italian football to a standstill.
Not since 1963 had the Derby di Sicilia been played in Serie A. Since then both Catania and Palermo had languished for long periods in Serie B or even C1, and suffered years of endless yo-yoing, so for both groups of fans, the chance to play their fiercest rivals in the top flight was a huge occasion. After the trouble which occurred at the first meeting of the two sides that season, it was no surprise to the police that violence erupted that evening. But the scale and gravity of the riots took everyone by surprise, and the tragic death of 38 year old police inspector Filippo Raciti continues to have repercussions for the national game as a whole.
So far as the events of that night go, there has been relatively little progress in identifying the culpable and bringing them to justice. Despite initial reports that Raciti had been killed by a bomb exploding in his face, it soon emerged that the fatal injuries he had incurred were to the stomach, inflicted by a metal bar and/or a section of sink wrenched from the wall of the stadium toilets.
Only many weeks later – and curiously, much less widely publicised in the media – did it emerge that Raciti’s injuries may actually have been caused by “friendly fire”. Video footage shows the inspector being hit by a reversing police 4×4. Meanwhile Antonino Speziale, a 17 year old rugby player, was charged with murder. Though he has admitted taking part in the riots, he denies attacking Raciti; charges against him are outstanding, but the wheels of Italian justice grind so slowly as to be almost in reverse, and he was released from custody in July.
The ten month anniversary comes hard on the heels of the death of Gabriele Sandri three weeks ago, and the debate about football violence is as vigorous as ever. Nothing has been solved, very little seems even to have changed. Raciti’s widow is now a regular talking head who is called up for an opinion every time anything happens. I can’t help feeling she may not be the most helpful person to ask. Knee-jerk legislation is still the order of the day, the ultras movement is still in crisis. But at least this time round the derby di Sicilia was not about smoke bombs, riot police and bricks but about applause, goals and, er, oranges. Progress of sorts.
Read more from Vanda over at Spangly Princess
Vanda Wilcox is a regular contributer to Pitch Invasion on Italian football, and writes about life in Italy at Spangly Princess.
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Nicely done, as always.
What is your take on the League mandating that all clubs in Serie A and B follow Fiorentina’s lead against Inter and applaud their opponents off the pitch beginning in January?
To me, it is typical of the tin ear the authorities have with respect to the issue in general, and yet another depressing example of their reflexive defaulting to mandatory legislation that will ultimately be counter-productive.
As a Fiorentina supporter for close to 30 years, I am obviously somewhat biased here, but the Viola’s gesture was powerful precisely because it was voluntary, unhyped and (as far as I could tell) sincere (the club had actually tried to get clearance from the League in advance, and had been rebuffed).
To make it mandatory immediately strips the gesture of any note of sincerity or spontaneity, and runs a very serious risk of converting what had been a meaningful sign of hope for the future into just another of the content-free bureaucratic rituals that Ms. Wilcox and I are familar with from living here.
Rather like Sepp Blatter’s endless homilies to the concept of Fair Play, in fact.
I get the fact that the Lega Calcio was afraid of new riots, but i think Catania-fans have learned their lesson by now. On the other hand, it’s incredibly short-sighted to ban Palermo-fans from the game, as this is a group of tifosi that doesn’t have a realy violent background and wasn’t even involved in the riots in February 2007.
There are quite a few people in Italy who share that view, Steven. And they are not all Palermitani.
Like so many other aspects of the official response to the “trouble”, the Osservatorio’s use of banning orders has been both heavy-handed and scatter-shot.
Ursus, how like you to pre-empt my own post on the “terzo tempo” so comprehensively by saying everything I wanted to say. *issues banning order*
The non-involvement of the Palermitani last February doesn’t change the fact that in the first match last season, in October, they were quite heftily cuaght up in the fighting which led to 50+ arrests. And they have major links to the far right (at least, the brigate rosanero do). I am no advocate of blanket scattergun banning orders, lord knows, but Palermo do come more or less under the heading of “the usual suspects”.
All of which said, after what happened in february even the thickest skulled hoolie wasn’t about to start anything in catania last sunday… the Osservatario has a “ban first, ask questions later” philosophy.
Oops.
Well, there are always the “slavish and ignorant adherence to the “English” model” and “falling over themselves to emulate rugby” angles.
Or there were . . .
I see that Mancini and Dello Rossi have made noises about it not being a great idea. I have a feeling we may see a somewhat less mandatory proposal come January.
I had thought about the trouble at the first Derby di Sicilia, and think is interesting to compare the Osservatorio’s treatment of the Palermitani and the Fiorentini in this regard. Both tifoserie are “usual suspects”, with the Viola almost certainly having the worse reputation and more “prior offences”. And yet we appear to be allowed to go pretty much anywhere (Juve may prove to be an exception), because the Osservatorio thinks we’ve shown positive signs of mending our ways (having not trashed anywhere this season).
And yet other clubs’ support don’t seem to be given the same benefit of the doubt (see, e.g., Palermo). The typical Italian explanation for the differential treatment would be a combination of long-standing regional bias and Fiorentina being owned by one of the most powerful businessmen in the country (who just happens to have certain ties with the current governing coalition), whereas Palermo are owned by a “mercurial” discount store magnate from the Veneto with a sometimes tenuous grip on reality, but I’m not sure that is the whole story.
As I’ve noted elsewhere, the prefect in Florence has followed an active policy of dialogue and “constructive engagement” with the Viola ultras (while at the same time cracking down on the violent criminal fringe), and there is no doubt in my mind that he has told his superiors at the Interior Ministry that they should take it easy on the Viola in order to encourage their continued support of those initiatives. If only his colleagues in other cities and regions would take a similarly progressive view, we might actually be on our way to making some real progress here.
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