KEY POINTS:
Why are we talking about this now?
The world of Italian football shut down indefinitely at the weekend after the death of a policeman in Sicily.
Rioting broke out during the Catania-Palermo derby in Catania, and Filippo Raciti died from his injuries. The nation was shocked by scenes of mayhem on the streets outside Catania's stadium and when the president of Italy's Football Federation, Luca Pancalli, announced a total shutdown he was warmly supported.
What else is wrong with the game?
It has yet to recover from a match-fixing scandal, exposed last year, in which officials at Juventus kept referees, linesmen, journalists and officials in line with favours of every kind. The scandal broke as the Italian team was heading to Germany for the World Cup, which they went on to win.
At the heart of it was the sporting director of Juventus, former assistant stationmaster and football talent scout Luciano Moggi, who, according to investigating magistrates, "attained a position of total domination and control of Italian professional football" through "blackmail, intimidation and unholy alliances of all kinds". As a result, Juventus was demoted to Serie B and other clubs were also punished.
But many say that despite the sanctions, nothing has really changed.
How bad is Italy's hooligan problem?
Confronted abroad by the best of the worst - Germans, Dutch, Turks and British - Italy's "ultras", as the hard men are known, tend to shut up and behave. But at home it's another matter, as Middlesbrough fans discovered when they were beaten up in a pub in central Rome last year by fans of the capital's club.
The ultras include both far-right and far-left wingers, they span the nation, they are the product, like those elsewhere, of dreary modern estates, bad schools, rubbishy television, mass unemployment, pervasive small-time criminality and soulless consumerism. But many come from the respectable middle class: a policeman in Catania was appalled to learn that his son was among the hooligans arrested on Friday.
Perhaps unique to Italy is the way many of them are indulged by the clubs they support: quietly provided with free tickets and travel in exchange for vocal support. But they are also known to turn on their clubs when they play badly, and are not beyond physically attacking home players who underperform.
Was the shutdown an overreaction?
Not necessarily. Former Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu passed a law mandating new standards of security at grounds, and last season the level of violence began to fall: 156 policemen were injured as opposed to 338 in 2004-5, and the number of fights resulting in injury dropped by an average of 7 per cent. But this year it has soared: already this season 228 police have been injured. Racist abuse, fascist banners, flares, fireworks and other missiles are increasingly common at grounds across the country.
Many of Pisanu's reforms remain unimplemented. For grounds with a capacity of more than 10,000 he required special police stations, video surveillance, turnstiles enabling named tickets to be checked, "pre-filtering areas" outside grounds and other measures. But only a handful of clubs have implemented them.
Stadiums throughout Italy are owned by municipalities rather than clubs, and long, tedious negotiations are required to obtain the necessary funds. The clubs themselves, concentrating their resources on buying players, have no great incentive to chip in. And the costs can be huge: at Rome's Olympic Stadium in Rome, home to both Roma and Lazio, improvements cost $11.6 million. In Milan they have already spent $58 million on improvements and say they are only 70 per cent there.
What is the Government doing about it?
Yesterday, the present Interior Minister, Giuliano Amato, told Parliament the measures laid down by his predecessor would be made even more stringent, and clubs and grounds that failed to implement them would no longer be allowed to get away with it.
"Many stadiums are a long way from implementing Pisanu's rules and many have shown they have no intention of implementing them," he said.
He said many grounds had claimed fraudulently to have a capacity of just under the 10,000 mark - 9999, or similar - giving them exemption.
Only the clubs which were fully in order would be allowed to function again, beginning this coming weekend, he said. The others will be allowed to hold games but in empty stadiums.
That went down well, did it?
No. Several managers said they would rather abandon the season altogether than have the games played before empty benches. In fact, the unanimity that characterised the initial reaction of both Government and sport to the tragedy evaporated rapidly, and now the two sides are trading insults on a regular basis.
The president of the Football League, Antonio Mattarese, said on Sunday: "The game must go on. Football can never stop. It's an industry and it pays its price. Deaths in the football system are a part of this huge movement." Afterwards he was assailed from all sides with demands for his resignation.
But as the days passed, the frustration of others grew audible.
"The worst thing one could do is play behind closed doors," said Rosella Sensi, vice-president of the league. "I think we need a bit of common sense, not to penalise in this way the third biggest industry in Italy."
Italy's football industry has an annual revenue of over $17 billion.
What happens next?
The Government has agreed that football can resume - a youth tournament will be held tomorrow - but only clubs with their grounds in legal order will be allowed to admit spectators.
And block tickets and train travel for fans will be banned indefinitely.
In the longer term, the Government will try to hasten a shift in the management of grounds from municipalities to the clubs, which will be encouraged to take responsibility for security and other aspects. Clubs will also be required to hire stewards to enforce order inside their grounds.
Several key figures in the game talk wistfully about importing the draconian English rules as the only way of making football safe and attractive for families again. But the suspension of civil liberties to which English fans submit these days is a long way from normal Italian behaviour.
- INDEPENDENT
