Match 7: Roma

I had expected the town to be mobbed as the game fell on the 8th December, which is quite a big deal for Catholics, being as it was the date of the Immaculate Conception. With a celebration for the conception of a child seventeen days before his birth, it seemed quite apt that I was off to see la maggica. In the end, Rome seemed to be as busy as it normally would be, which is nice as I’m really not a fan of massed throngs milling around. At least in a football stadium the accumulated hordes have a purpose and a sense of direction, even if this is often more figurative than literal.

When I arrived at the shop, I asked for a ticket for the Distinti Sud, as I’d been recommended to try for there due to its proximity to the Curva Sud (the main home-fan stand, which I hadn’t been able to get a ticket for). Much to my chagrin, there were no tickets left, leaving me with a split-second decision: would I not bother with the match, or would I spend €75 for the Tribuna Tevere? I’d come that far by then, both literally and figuratively (see the personal development crowed about two paragraphs ago), but €75? Really?

In the end, I made the only decision I could, and just bought the stupid bloody thing. Still though, it was getting ridiculous: spending €75 on a ticket to watch a team that isn’t even mine, even if it was for what would hopefully end up being a worthy cause, was galling. While I was handing over the money I got the sweats as I often do when spending money spuriously, and felt like they were pulling my pants down, I truly did. I think it would have been the least they could have done, to be fair. So, feeling robbed, I headed off for the stadium hoping for a happy ending to the whole affair.

To get to the Stadio Olimpico from the centre of Rome, however, is not all that quick or easy. My best friend, Google Maps, suggested that I take a bus, and ever happy to act on its advice, I dutifully waited for one. I’d looked around for a kiosk that’d sell bus tickets, but alas there were none open, so figured that seeing as I’d been buying bus tickets in Genoa for years, this once ‘being Portuguese’ wouldn’t hurt. Just call me Miguel. Despite having lived here for a good few years, the fundamental difference between right (following rules) and wrong (not doing so) is in my DNA, and no amount of gesticulating wildly while speaking to friends on the phone will entirely dilute it. Knowing that what I was doing was against the rules made me a bit nervous, so I kept my eyes peeled for inspectors lurking in bus stops. My unease was well-founded, as nary three stops after I’d got on, I had to very quickly get off when inspectors boarded. Damn those crafty buggers doing their job, and on a Sunday to boot! Is nothing sacred anymore?!

When I checked the map again, it rather disappointingly told me that I was about five kilometres from the stadium. We didn’t speak for some time after that, but thankfully once again I only had to go along very long straight roads until I saw some likely-looking sorts and follow them as slavishly as Berlusconi does to his own self-interest.

Given the distance, the fact that I was fairly marching, and my unnecessarily thick woollen  jumper, by the time I got to the stadium I was puggled. With three minutes to get to my seat before kick off, I hoisted myself up the steps as quickly as possible, and arrived just in time to blow a fug of smoke into a child’s face as the ref tooted his whistle. As they say, ‘when in Rome…’.

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Match 6: Sassuolo

How can a company that doesn’t check if you pay for its service survive? Who or what is a ‘Sassuolo’, precisely? And when will Trenitalia force me to snap, à la Michael Douglas in ‘Falling Down’? These were just some of the questions running through my mind on the train to Reggio Emilia, where Sassuolo play, but not where they’re from. It seemed vaguely apt that I was on the way to see a team that’s spent the last few years nomading their way round leagues and stadia. I wouldn’t claim to be an intrepid explorer or particularly unique, but I live in a country that isn’t my own, and over the course of the last five years have lived in six different apartments, almost always with a feeling of being lost. Only now do I feel like I’m getting to grips with life, but there’s always the nagging doubt that I’m kidding myself and everyone around me. That’s partly the reason I undertook this whole book: to give myself a reason to stay in Italy. 

But first, to one of those original questions. Sassuolo are a team from Emilia Romagna, and to be more precise, Sassuolo, if such a thing could be believed! In the week before this game I told some students my plans for the weekend, namely watching Sassuolo play Atalanta, to which I was generally greeted with two responses: 

1) bemused faces and “Sassuolo have a team / are in Serie A?”

and

2) “It’s a good place to buy tiles - there are a lot of tile warehouses there”.

Always good to know, that. I guess it’s nice to be famous for something and those lucky folk of Sassuolo now have their town’s name on the map for two reasons: tiles and fitba’. Of course it was already on the map if you looked closely enough, but, well, you understand what I mean.

Some fun facts about US Sassuolo Calcio: it’s not a lesser-known spaceship from Star Trek, but it is one of only a select few teams in Italy to have played in Serie A that don’t come from their provincial capital. What’s a provincial capital, you ask? Well, basically it’s a bonus level of officialdom to ensure more people have safe jobs for life without really having anything to do except bog things down in a miasma of bureaucracy. In case you’re wondering, some of the other teams on this august list are: Casale, Cesena, Empoli, Lecco, Legnano, Pro Patria and Savoia. No, me neither for most of them.

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Match 5: Verona

Verona the city lies in the north-west and like much of the rest of Italy, has changed hands frequently through the years. It has ‘belonged’ to, among others, the Romans, the Ostrogoths, Napoleon, and the Austrian empire before being becoming part of Italy in 1866. A nickname that the football team has is i scaligeri, after an important family in the city’s history, although having read about them, it’s surprising that their descendants were able to achieve anything given their apparent fondness for plotting fratricide. One of them, Cansignorio, killed two of his brothers while another, Antonio, after Cansignorio’s death, continued his brother’s legacy by killing another brother, Bartolomeo. Modern soap-operas have nothing on fourteenth century Verona.

It’s also a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its architecture and urban structure which makes it very popular with tourists and was the home of three of Shakespeare’s plays: The Taming of the Shrew, (pretty self-explanatorily) The Two Gentlemen of Verona and of course, Romeo and Juliet. Unfortunately from a cultural point of view, I was there to watch some football, not to take photos of buildings and statues, so when I arrived I buzzed off from the train station and made a bee line for the stadium. The route is fairly non-descript through a relatively modern part of town: one big road flanked by blocks of flats. I’ve had a few extended wanders round parts of other towns thanks to misreading the maps on my phone, so I reverted to some good old-fashioned following people who looked like they were going my way. I quickly spied a guy in a gialloblù scarf, so stalked him until he led me to the stadium, at which point I abandoned him and found myself a suitable looking watering hole. I’ve been told that it’s a regional tradition to have what amounts to mulled wine for breakfast, but crucially, when I was in Verona I had forgotten about this. I’ll be back in spring for a Chievo Verona match, so I’ve promised myself that when I’m back in this neck of the woods I’ll be a bit more touristy and in the name of research drink some wine for breakfast before taking a stroll round the historical centre. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to (choose) to do it.

I found myself a bar in which to have some lunch and to collect my thoughts before heading to a more conventional pub. After all that I’d been told about the locals, how would it go? My only previous experience of Verona fans (albeit from quite a distance, and only of those fanatical enough to go to away matches) was not entirely positive, to say the least. Would they all be the snarling in-breds I’d been warned of? Would there be the scumbags who chanted during a minute’s silence after a disaster? Would my being alone in a pub while they drank and chatted pre-match mark me as a suspicious ‘unknown other’? Before coming, a friend confided that the veronesi were the terroni of the north. Terroni is the pejorative term used by some northerners to describe southern Italians. It’s derived from terra, meaning earth/ground, and so it’s used to indicate rural people, i.e. those with a typically lower level of education and sophistication. As Verona is in the north, what my friend was alluding to was that the veronesi were not good, civilised people, despite their inherent northernness. I was to be careful, as they had no scruples. As I’ve said, I don’t normally take other people’s ideas at face value, but to be fore-warned is to be fore-armed, and he was just trying to look out for me which is of course appreciated. 

With all this in mind, had I seen a mob with flailing pitch forks (but snappily dressed - lazy stereotype ahoy, but Italians do normally dress reasonably well, savages or not) chasing one of the town’s African community down the street, I probably wouldn’t have been too surprised. Dismayed, per carita, but not too surprised. Imagine my genuine surprise then, that when I popped into a pub opposite the ground and asked for a beer, the woman behind the bar not only understood me, but answered me in comprehensible Italian, and all with a minimum of spitting and drooling! As I drank my beer I looked around, and it was like any other bar in any other part of Italy that I’ve been to. Generic furniture and decor? Check. Same old collection of spirits behind the bar? Check. Old men sitting reading the paper in the corner? Check. Maybe Verona and the veronesi aren’t so different from you and I after all? Just to be sure, I tried to blend in with the locals by drinking my beer and watching the early kick off on the TV.

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Mi presento ai visitatori italiani

Ciao a tutti! Prima da spiegare il motivo per questo blog, mi spiego un pochino: Sono scozzese, ma vivo in Italia. Per tutta la mia vita seguo il calcio (anche se il calcio scozzese è pessimo). Insegno inglese, che non mi spiace, ma voglio una scusa per guardare le partite e fare le trasferte. Mi sembra che un libro sia una bella scusa....

Perciò:

In questa stagione di Serie A (2013/14) vado a vedere le 20 squadre di Serie A per assorbire i colori, i canti e la passione delle tifoserie di casa. 

Le partite saranno guardate, le birre bevute, e i treni persi.

Perché? 

Sto scrivendo un libro (in inglese) della tifoseria italiana e delle squadre italiane. Non sono un troll! 

Come immaginate (e direi vi rendiate conto) mi fa fatica scrivere in italiano, scusate i miei errori!

Match 4: Parma

Living in Genoa can be a bit of a pain in the posterior for getting to cities that aren’t Milan, Turin, Pisa or Rome.  Sadly, Parma falls into the category of being ‘not one of those cities’, so it took me a while to get there. You may have noticed above that the distance between Genova and Parma is a not inconsiderable 470 kilometres, but that’s as the train trundles, not as the crow flies (this is a paltry 118 kilometres). My enthusiasm for getting back on the road quickly fell out of the window and tumbled along the side of the track like a discarded cigarette, as despite this marking only the 20% point of teams visited, my desire to spend time and money on Trenitalia’s ‘services’ was already almost exhausted.  Still, I could be spending my time and money on more trivial matters. What’s that you say, a book about Italian football isn’t going to add to the cultural canon of our times? 

Oh. Well, yes, you’re probably right. Keep it to yourself though.

But anyway, following the tension of Bologna, I was quite happy to go to Parma, as the fans there have a reputation of being less intense in their supporting than most other teams, so the visit of Milan would hopefully offer the chance to watch a good game without any concerns over my personal safety. 

If you’re nodding your head at the mention of Parma, there’s a chance you’ve heard of it because of its reputation for food, and not so much for its football (although I’ll get to that soon enough). It is of course where some of the finest prosciutto and parmesan cheese comes from, and the locals are referred to as ‘parmigiani' (parmesan is parmigiano in Italian), but don’t worry, I won’t be making any hammy jokes about the cheese.

Much like the rest of Italy, the city of Parma has had more owners down through the years than a £5 note. It, like Bologna from last time, is in Emilia-Romagna, so while the local political sentiment is nominally left-leaning, I saw a lot of well-heeled folk out and about in their early-Saturday evening best. I may be gravely wrong-headed in my thinking, but I always associate lefties as being a bit frugal and drab when it comes to their clothing. Not that those who lean more to the right are paragons of style, mind. This may be based on my experience of university lecturers who are of course all raging socialists by default, though that isn’t necessarily such a bad thing in my eyes. But anyway, I had thought about having a nice wee aperitivo in a piazza, but felt like a bit of a scruff. Instead, I strolled round the very picturesque centre of town, which is full of cultural stuff to do if that’s your bag. In terms of local famous faces, the most notable is Giuseppe Verdi for all you classical music buffs.

Annoyingly, some teams put tickets on sale online for the cheaper seats, while others don’t. Parma don’t, so in the days running up to the match I was faced with the no-brainer of either spending €120 for a ticket in the nicer stands and rolling up on the day, or going to Parma on the Saturday, buying a cheap ticket and staying in a hotel. The latter was the only real choice on a matter of principle and also finance. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to spend more than a hundred euros on a ticket for a team I don’t support. Scratch that in fact: there’s no way I’m going to spend more than a hundred euros on any team. Football’s great, but there is a line that I will not cross, a line which is demarcated with images of me being kicked out of my flat for non-payment of rent. 

............

Match 3: Bologna

Match day three of my football-watching journey took me to Emilia-Romagna’s ‘red belt’. Bologna, the city, has a reputation of being a bit red around the gills in a political sense, and in fact has the nickname of the la dotta, la grassa e la fossa (the learned, the fat and the red). This comes from the fact that Bologna has the oldest university in the world, has some great food, and habitually votes for lefties (in politics, not southpaws).

The match that drew me here was between Bologna and Hellas Verona. As someone commented to me in the days before, it was a meeting of the reds and the blacks. See, Verona have a reputation for being fairly right-wing. So, a nice relaxing kick about between communists and fascists. When I was organising my fixture list for this season, I thought to myself, what's the worst that could happen?

Well, things didn't start particularly brightly. First, I got on the wrong train from Milan. I say wrong, but it was kind of right. Both 'my' train and this train were going to Bologna, but 'my' train should have arrived in fifty minutes and comfort. The train I took arrived in Bologna after a two-and-a-something hour journey, and was far from comfortable. The Italian word for comfortable is comodo, but this train was more commode than comodo. I half expected people to get on with livestock in cages. Added to this was the train inspector who, when enquiring after my ticket, informed me that I shouldn't be on this train. “No shit, Sherlock” doesn’t really translate well in Italian, so I tried to look apologetic while making a 'what can I do' gesture and he humphed and tutted but then disappeared never to return. I stewed in my own self-annoyance for a while, but then reasoning that there wasn't much to do about it now, tried to spot through the pre-dusk gloom and fog the lone equine inhabitants of the dozen or so towns we stopped in. By the time we got to Bologna, it was dark, wet and I was a little peeved. My hotel was once again in the shady part of town, which was as fun to find as always.

For those of you who have never been to Bologna, it's really very nice and I'd recommend it. It's a bit of a university city, so there are lots of young people and a good atmosphere in the centre of town. Coming from Genoa, which is essentially a giant care home masquerading as an urban centre, this was as refreshing as the rain that ran down my back on the way to the hotel, but far more welcome. On this trip I was strictly a football tourist though, so didn't venture in, but I've been before and it was most pleasant. That said, because of it's geographical location, the summers are very hot and humid and the winters are freezing, so not nice enough for my delicate soul to consider habitation. 

The Bolognese divide their sporting passion between football and basketball. There's only one team that kicks balls about, but two that throw them. They are Fortitudo and Virtus. A lot of the people I met at the game were going straight to watch Fortitudo play later on in the evening, who were described to me as being “a bit shit” but the people's club, while Virtus are more of a Juventus (successful, but not universally loved). I'll get to the football soon, but it surprised me to hear that there's an Ultras’ group for Fortitudo (la Fossa dei Leoni). I'd never imagined that basketball, while being a fun and interesting sport, could get the blood going quite enough to warrant an Ultras’ group. As Jim Morrison once opined: “People are strange”.

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Match 2: Sampdoria

One month to the day since my first, and at this point, only trip round Italy in pursuit of calcio, I really pushed the boat out. The gruelling voyage of discovery to watch Sampdoria took me about 15 minutes, which was most satisfyingly easy. The game was a Wednesday night affair, and given that I had work on the Wednesday afternoon and then again on the Thursday morning, venturing too far from home would have been tricky. 

So, after starting with Il Toro, game number two was Sampdoria versus Roma. In a way, this game brought me back full-circle to my Italian football origins, if that doesn't sound too grand or lah-di-dah. When I was but a child, my first interest in Italian football blossomed through Gazzetta Football Italia with James Richardson, and Roma winning the Scudetto. Playing for them at that time were Totti, Batistuta, Montella and Delvecchio, but over the years three of them had departed, Totti's arse had got much bigger, and I had (at least outwardly) lost interest in obsessing over football, instead trying to blend in with the rest of my age-group and their interests in more trivial things like school, girls and booze. 

Then, when I came to Italy in 2008, my first game was watching Sampdoria play Juventus. Compared to Scottish fitba' and straining to watch a match at Easter Road through the rolling sleet, this was a revelation. It was sunny! I (probably) wore a T shirt! There were flags, banners and flares all over the shop! It was another world. 

............

Match 1: Torino

Torino v Sassuolo, 25/8/13, Stadio Olimpico, Turin

Kilometres covered: Genova to Turin = 170km x four = 680km
Euros spent: €115

The first stop on my magical mystery tour of calcio was Turin, to watch Torino play newly-promoted Sassuolo. Previous to last season, I'd never heard of the visitors, and had to look them up on a map, and I'm afraid to say that I’m still not much the wiser. Somewhere near Modena seems to be the conclusion. Getting there won't be much fun as it'll involve three different trains, but that will be a pain in the arse for another day.

So, Il Toro was pick number one to get me started. In 1861, before bringing people together in their appreciation of his biscuits, Giuseppe Garibaldi was one of the leading players in the unification of Italy. Turin was to be the first capital, and so from a historical point of view, it could be argued that it would be the best, most logical place to start. In reality, the reason I chose Turin was because I thought it'd be the least maddeningly hot city to start off with in late August. The heat, it would later turn out, was not to be an issue.

Another bonus of Turin is that it's quite near my base in Genoa, so I could ease myself into 

the waters of football travelling and watching quite easily and without spending a lot of time or money to get there. That's dedication for you!

Originally formed in 1887 as a football and cricket club, it wasn't until 19 years later that the team that is recognised today as Il Toro was created. The symbol is a bull (hence ‘Il Toro’), while another sobriquet they have is I Granata, after the claret strips they wear. Most one-eyed supporters of whichever team would claim theirs to be one of the most important or storied clubs in the country, and while many of these would be guilty of rose-tinting in the name of their passion, the Torino supporters may have a point. The joint-fifth most successful club based on championship wins, they were a force to be reckoned with in the past. Their last glimpse of glory (excluding promotions) was in 1992 when they reached the UEFA Cup final, only to be bested by cleaning products' Ajax who scrubbed up better over two legs.

The greatest era of Torino Calcio was undoubtedly that of Il Grande Torino, the legendary five-in-a-row champions of Serie A between 1942 and 1949 (the seasons 1943-44 and '44-'45 were not recognised as being official Italian Football Association competitions, what with the war and all that). This period ended tragically when the plane that was carrying them from a friendly against Benfica crashed into the Superga hill near Turin, killing all 31 people on board. Only three squad members who had not made the flight remained.

On a more anglicised note, Il Toro were the club where Denis Law and Joe Baker used to lay their hats; Graeme Souness sat in the big comfy manager’s chair for 4 months in 1997 (so on second thoughts maybe it wasn't comfy enough); and for connoisseurs of shin-kicking, Pasquale Bruno hatchet-manned for them for three seasons following Italia '90.

............

Introductory note

Just a wee note to let you know what I'm doing. You've already read the blurb, so you know what the aim of my book will be, but here I'll explain what's next re the blog.

I hope this will have two functions:

1) To let you know what I'm doing, and to give you a taste of what I've written already. In order to whet your collective appetites, I'll post excerpts from each of the chapters I've done so far and of those I will do over the next five months so that you can clutch your wallets/purses in fevered anticipation of my book's eventual publication.

and

2) Act as a point of reference to any Italian fans who I try to contact on the internet, as many so far seem not to believe that I'm genuine and instead decide (based on my introduction of myself written in passable Italian) that I'm a troll, out to take the piss out of them and their team. So, just to be clear, if I contact you on a forum or blog for your team: I AM NOT A TROLL.

So, without further ado, let's get started....

P.S. If you have any suggestions or comments, I'd be delighted to hear them, as long as they're constructive or fawning.