We got a great reaction to Tom’s first piece on the joys of following ‘calcio’ in Italy click here to see original piece, making it into some Scandinavian blogs, no less. So as promised, he’s followed up with more expert advice. As we write, we await with breath baited to see just what division i viola and some of their fiercest rivals will start the 06-07 season in…but regardless, you can rest assured a trip to one of the world’s great cities will prove even more inspiring if you take in a trip to the Artemio Franchi whilst there…
In a country dominated by local issues, Florence is arguably the “ne plus ultra” of “otherness”. People from Florence genuinely see themselves as one-offs and in the face of a peerless tradition of art and philosophy, it’s hard not to argue. The town of course has one football team, Fiorentina or i viola.
It would be hard to understate how much the town is behind its team. Most shops will have a Fiorentina calendar, or a picture of a player in the window. The central market is a riot of purple and you can stand around the carts selling hot tripe with chilli sauce (a local thing) and overhear men and women arguing about team selection and perceived injustices. I once walked past a nun wearing a large Gabriel Batistuta lapel badge.
If you’re going to visit Florence there are three games to aim for; the visits of Juve, Roma and Lazio. Some of the games against Tuscan opposition can also be lively (Pisa, Livorno, Siena etc).
The hatred of Juve is deep seated and sincere. In a nutshell, Viola fans feel that Juve stole a championship from them in 1982 when lo scudetto went to the last day and Juve were awarded a very strange penalty in their game, whilst Fiorentina were denied perfectly good “goals” in theirs (very topical – Ed). Relations worsened in 1990 when the club sold its brightest, shining star, Roberto Baggio to Juve. The city burned for three nights. Subsequent matches have been littered with incidents between the fans, but the games have managed to remain very entertaining. Be warned, this is the one game where tickets are going to be difficult to get. If money isn’t a problem then it’s worth getting one from any of the ticket sellers that advertise on the internet. Make sure you’re sitting down when they tell you the price though.
Alternatively, if you’re in Florence a couple of days before the game head to the stadium and visit some of the bars – some of them are “official” ticket sellers and will always respond to football fans who have travelled a distance to see “their” club. Newly introduced laws whereby photo id has to be shown in order to purchase a ticket seem (as ever) to have been ignored.
The stadium is situated on the outskirts of town in the Tuscan foothills. On a warm day, it is hard not to be moved by how beautiful it all is. The blue of the sky, the green of the pitch, the violet shirts. The stadium too is a thing of beauty and is called the Franchi. You can see some pictures of it here; http://www.stadiumguide.com/artemiofranchi.htm
Outside, you can buy yourself innumerable anti-Juve t shirts such as the memorable “Grazie a Dio non sono gobbi” – Thank God I’m not a hunchback. Gobbi (the Italian for hunchback, considered lucky) is the nickname for Juve given the amount of “lucky” decisions that go their way.
The following match report is taken from an article I wrote in 2000, when a rampant Lazio, second in Serie A, visited Fiorentina.
“If you’re into food, it’s always worth making a b line for the mercado centrale, which
judging by the number of pubescent American girls falling out of the doors, half puking, half muttering "oh my gard" was always going to be time well spent. Interesting and brilliantly simple food. The fish is spanking fresh and there are dozens of stalls solely for cheese - parmesans, peccorinos, mozarellas and some mad local goats’ cheeses that need to be chained down lest they attack the customers. The meat stalls are a Dante-esque, vision of skinned rabbits - teeth still in mind – and disembowelled cows, tangled limbs and bizarre unidentifiable offal. One stall was selling what I can only describe as animal fragments – how exactly do you cook a cock’s comb?
I stopped at the "Boutiqua Della Tripe" (bit of a branding problem here I’d say) and chatted to the owner about the football as he had several pictures of Gabriel Batistuta on his stall. Of course when I say “chat” what I actually mean was I used my entire Italian vocabulary (six words) and he his entire English (three) and we came to an agreement that a) Batigol is a fine footballer and b) even in Florence, the future for tripe is uncertain.
One hour and one bus ride later I got to the Artemio Franchi stadium - one of my favourite buildings anywhere. Built in the thirties as an athletics stadium for the community, the spiral staircases at the back of the Maratona stand must be one the most graceful ways of entering a football stadium anywhere. It also provides the perfect vantage point from which a few locals can launch missiles into the arriving away fans.
Remarkably, given the hype about the game, tickets were still on sale. This is another facet of Italian football that is worth noting. The idea of booking tickets in advance (“prenotazione”) is anathema to most Italians – presumably because it implies being rushed or over organized. I’ve walked up to grounds which have been “sold out” for weeks and managed to buy tickets for face value from the club’s own ticket office. That said, I have also ended up outside grounds where the club has decided to shut the ticket office an hour before kick off with thousands of empty seats in the ground going unsold.
I managed to work out that the ticket that I had for the game was a stone's throw from the pens where the Lazio fans would be. This would turn out to be a prophetic turn of phrase. Having sold my ticket at face value to a speechless local (who would have granted me permanent access to the entire female side of this family had I so desired) I upgraded my seating position to Poltrona Centrale, the best in the house.
Much had been made in the run up to this game of what happened the year previous when instead of an expected 1,500 travelling support er, 9,000 Laziali arrived from Rome. In the chaos that ensued there were many injuries and a level of civil disorder not seen for a long time in Florence. This is quite an achievement given the Viola's volatility. Most local papers were full of a vast army travelling without tickets, how many police were being deployed (800) and wondering if anything of the city would be standing come sundown. From what I can gather the original enmity between the two camps is political – Lazio (or Nazio as someone once dubbed them) are traditionally very, very right wing whereas many of the Viola tifosi groups are left leaning.
It is 1.50pm and I am in my seat (I know it's sad, but that's my prerogative). Opposite me are c5,000 Laziali in two pens. They are throwing seats, coins, sticks, kitchen sinks etc over the fence at the few Viola in Curva B. At the back of the stand a few are trying to
climb over the fence. I notice that there are six people in orange bibs who I assume are
stewards but who are actually ambulancemen permanently stationed in the Curva to deal with the steady flow of injuries from missiles.
At about the 2.15pm, there is a large explosion from the back of the away fans pen. Let me rephrase that. There is a huge explosion. Even though I am 100 yards away I can feel my fillings bouncing around in their cavities. Suddenly there is a large surge of people running everywhere and another explosion. Through the bottom of the stand I can
see batons being raised and missiles flying everywhere. A group of Lazio fans are trying to get into the Viola Curva. A policeman had his leg broken in this battle.
I could go on but won't. Newspaper and TV coverage the next day concentrated on what happened after the game which was even worse than what had occurred before. Forty injured, including a granny hit by a bottle. If one hundredth of what happened on Saturday occurred in an English league ground, we would be banned forever. This, in a week when unbelievably, I read an article about the Istanbul stabbings which finished "it is not thought that these incidents will harm England's bid for the 2006 World Cup." This is as ill-judged and shallow a comment as one would ever want to see but it is illuminating don't you think?
Wasn't there meant to be a game of football in here somewhere?
For the first 20 minutes Lazio comprehensively outplayed Fiorentina. Veron was imperious (honestly, if you’d seen him play for Lazio you’d know why Fergie bought him) and Pavel Nedved is still the best footballer in Europe. Unfortunately (for him) because he is the archetypal po-faced, self effacing Eastern European that he is, he is not afforded the sort of attention that the good looking rock star types are.
Talking of which, the angel Gabriel scored on Fiorentina's first attack.
Two minutes later Lazio equalised. Two minutes after that they hit the post. One minute later they took the lead. The stadium was a cacophony. Fiorentina equalised about fifteen minutes into the second half and then it got really exciting. Bear in mind here that Lazio were three points behind Juve in the title chase. After 85 minutes Nedved beat four defenders and was fouled bearing down on goal. The ref walks the twenty yards to the spot and very, very slowly points his finger to the spot. No sooner has he replaced the smoking gun in its holster than Torricelli manhandles him and almost, almost, knocks him to the ground. Pandemonium. All the crowd had been duped into thinking it wasn't a penalty.
Unbelievably Torricelli isn't sent off. The Lazio fans are going crazy. Mihajlovic misses. My ears hurt.
Two minutes later (87') Lazio are awarded another penalty. This time Mihajlovic makes no mistake and the Laziali go ape – 3-2 and three points towards lo scudetto.
Stone throwing and running around has now reached fever pitch on the Curva. Lazio are now level on points with Juve. Into injury time and Fiorentina are awarded a free kick, about twenty five yards out, slightly to the left of the goal. Batistuta places the ball and in an eerie silence and in a moment that will stay with me forever, belts it over and around the wall into the left hand corner of the goal. Had there been a roof on the ground it would still be in orbit. The police line on the Maratona is broken as "ordinary" Fiorentina fans go berserk and charge at the Laziali. Two large flares are flung in their end. And on and on it goes and eventually I leave the ground and whilst a part of me knows that there are unacceptable parts of this level of support and fervour, it ain't half heady and I LOVE IT.
There is a small but interesting postscript to this game. You’d have thought that the following morning’s papers would have lead with details of the game and the ensuing trouble. Actually, they lead with an apology from Gabriel Batistuta to the Fiorentina fans as his equalizing goal had improved Juve’s chances of winning lo scudetto. Now that is scary.
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