Anyone See a Body? No? Super, State of Emergency Over!

By: Martha | June 15th, 2007

Oh dear. Thankfully, no one has died at an Italian football game since the tragic riots in Catania on February 2. As a result, then Italian interior ministry has popped a bottle of champagne and declared the crisis officially over. Whew! Boy, do I feel better.

Under the February-June State of Emergency, the interior ministry could not only cancel and physically move games, but also force changes to the scheduling of derby matches, moving them to less hazardous days or times (generally in the middle of the day, a policy that pissed off pretty much everyone). Now, though, the tifosi will be happy, because the league is back in control and is again free to schedule matches at the most dangerous times possible.

The great (she said ironically) thing about the government’s statement is the combined self-congratulation about the decrease violence during the second half of the season (injuries among cops were down over 90% from the previous season; the drop among fans was around 40%) and stern insistence that the issues of safety and violence are in no way closed. Even in the face of such impressive statistics, they want us to know that the fight will not end until calcio has been taken “back to a situation of normality.” Er … fellas? As sad as it is, normality in Italy is violence, disorder and unpredictability — did you forget what life was like six months ago? Two years? Ten? I think pretty much everyone would prefer you didn’t rest until we’d moved well past normality, thanks.

Apart from normality, the goals for next season are the same as they were for the end of this one: Get those damn anti-hooligan measures (passed back in 2005) in place and enforce them, and dramatically increase the number of stewards (on the English model), a move which is expected to decrease the police presence in and around grounds and go a long way towards reducing tensions in a lot of cases.