Corruption in Italian Soccer

Soccer means more than just a livelihood for players in Italy. It means that they can exonerate themselves, forget about a difficult day at work and worship their favorite players. For pessimists, it means that soccer fans will continue to go out of control and that they will see the continued disruption of a clean game, if clean games do still exist.

Italian police have now devised a scheme to restrict the ultra members from filling up all the seats of stadiums so as to stave off potential rioting. The ultras are disruptive younger people that carry in offensive banners to the stadium, shout offensive remark and instigate violence. Some Italians are saying that the rioting is no more than what occurs in England, they say is the origin of hooliganism on the soccer field. This writer believes though that the difference between the two countries is that England appears to have stemmed the violence whereas Italy seems to perpetuate it. This is seen either through the presence of radical elements that revoke a fascist past, through racial slurs thrown on a black player or through conduct that smacks of bribing coaches. Anti police rioting has recently occurred in Italy as a result of retaliation for the death of a fan, making the country look very volatile.

Soccer is so entrenched in the Italian peninsula that when the slogan Forza Italia was developed, it became adopted as a political slogan and had a tremendous effect in bringing in a recent leader Berlusconi. Recently though the fact that the Juventus team has won over many years and the Inter team has not, lead observers to understand that behind the winning, was scandalous behavior. In fact the Juventus had won so many games because coaches were being bribed and in the meantime the average public was unaware. Hopefully today soccer can be played in a more transparent manner so that teams have a fair access to coaching assistance.

It would also be a good idea for Italian politics to keep its hands out of the game too. The country is trying to curb the violence in stadiums not only by restricting access to troublemakers but also by disallowing offensive banners to be carried there. Last year the country was involved in match fixing, so the Italian victory was rigged. The corruption is not unique to Italy alone as it has occurred in Germany and also goes back seventeen years ago and probably even further when a certain Argentinean player, Maradona was discovered taking androgens used for muscle building while playing for the Naples team. His blood was also found to contain traces of cocaine such that he was later banned from the World Cup. In my mind this sort of behavior still exists in the sport and it is only a matter of time before someone else gets caught. In the meantime soccer players are some of the best-paid sports people in the world, receiving millions but in Rome a single woman may only be eligible for several hundred dollars a month.