- The Observer
38 11.08.19 Focus
Diabolik, king
of football’s
far-right ultras,
died as he lived
- violently
The death of Fabrizio
Piscitelli, the notorious
former boss of Lazio’s
Irriducibili, ended a
long ca reer of t hugger y,
crime and extremism,
writes Tobias Jones
once said, “we were looking to injure
people on the other side, we wanted
to go onto the terraces and kill
them.” Fighting, he said, made him
“feel alive in a world of the dead”.
By the mid-1980s, Lazio’s pre-
dominant fi rm, the Eagles, seemed
too sedate for Piscitelli and the other
teenagers who were hanging out
with a graphic designer called Grinta
(“Grit”). In 1987, Grinta and his tear-
aways founded a new crew, the
Irriducibili, using as their symbol a
bowler-hatted character called Mr
Enrich swinging a kick. They fought
the Eagles for terrace supremacy,
easily getting to the centre of the
curva (the curved terrace) by the tac-
tic of being willing to use far more
violence than their rivals.
It was fortunate timing. Lazio
enjoyed a revival in the 1990s. The
club signed world-class players such
as Beppe Signori and Paul Gascoigne.
It was taken over by a wealthy entre-
preneur, Sergio Cragnotti. Guided by
the Swedish manager, Sven-Göran
Eriksson , Lazio won its second scu-
detto as well as a Uefa Cup and two
Italian cup fi nals.
Suddenly there was a lot of money
in both football and, specifi cally, in
Lazio. Ultra fi rms had always pro-
duced stickers, scarves, badges, fan-
zines and shirts to subsidise their
choreographies, rent and travel, but
the Irriducibili took it to another
level. They rented warehouses,
opened franchises and became
experts at using the stadium to
publicise their political, and sarto-
rial, pose. Their slogans and stunts
always made the papers, and often
the television. Seeing the amount
of money to be made, Piscitelli
deposed Grinta as the leader of the
Irriducibili and turned the cottage
industry into a business empire
called Original Fans.
At its peak, Original Fans had 12
outlets. The turnover was largely
cash-in-hand so precise fi gures are
hard to come by, but Piscitelli became
a millionaire. (An estate of €2.3m
was confi scated from him in 2016).
The deeply offensive extremism
of the Irriducibili helped brand the
Original Fans label. Swastikas, Roman
salutes, antisemitism, plastering Anne
Frank stickers as insults, singing theL
ast Wednesday evening,
the most famous face of
Rome’s criminal under-
world was sitting on a
bench in the Parco degli
Acquedotti – the “park
of the aqueducts” – in the south-
east of the city. Fabrizio Piscitelli,
53 , was well-known because, for
almost 30 years, he had been the
undisputed boss of Italy’s toughest
ultra gang, Lazio’s Irriducibili (“the
Irreducibles” or “Die Hards”). He
was nicknamed “Diabolik” , after a
cartoon thief and assassin.
Shortly before 7pm, a man
dressed as a jogger ran past the
bench and fi red a 7 .65 calibre pistol
into Piscitelli’s left ear. It had all the
hallmarks of a professional hit.
The murder brought to a close
one of the most incredible careers
in the history of Lazio’s ultras. The
club’s fanbase has always been very
politicised: during Italy’s “years of
lead” (its extremist terrorism) in the
1970s, it was very common to see,
among the white-and-sky-blue col-
ours of Lazio supporters, many of
Benito Mussolini’s symbols. It was
an era in which Lazio ultras became
both victims and perpetrators of
political assassinations.
That was the turbulent decade in
which Piscitelli fi rst went to the sta-
dium. But it was a period of sport-
ing decline: the team’s glorious 1974
scudetto (meaning it had won the
Serie A championship) was fading
from view, and soon match-fi xing
scandals would relegate the team to
Serie B and, almost, to C.
Piscitelli wasn’t overly interested
in football, though. By the time he
was in his teens, the real match was
with rival ultras. He was a street-
fi ghter. “For the good of Lazio,” he
Society
In the late 60s and early 70s,
teenage football fans rebelled
against Italy’s sedate supporters’
clubs and went to stand, and sing,
behind the goal. Th ey’ve been
compared to punks and Hells
Angels.Th e word “ultra” implies
“extreme”, “beyond” or “other”. At its foundation, the movement
was largely far-left, with names
inspired by global partisan struggles.
Petty criminals and political
extremists were drawn to the
terraces’ carnival atmosphere andthe huge customer base. Most ultra
groups are now fascist in inspiration
and many have overlapped with
organised crime. Ultras are comparable to, but
diff erent from, British football
hooligans. Th ey relish drinking
and fi ghting, but are much more
hierarchical and disciplined, with
a sober strategic analysis of the
group’s sporting, and economic,
interests. Despite their reputation, there
are ultra groups that are inspiring,
charitable and inclusive.national anthem during silences for Who are the ultras?
drowned migrants ... the Irriducibili
were always in the news and began
attracting thousands of recruits from
far-right parties such as Forza Nuova.
All adherents, of course, had to pay a
subscription and purchase the right
clobber. “If Piscitelli weren’t a gang-
ster,” a Lazio supporter told me once
outside the Stadio Olimpico, “he
could have been a CEO.”
Piscitelli was charismatic: he
could be pally and charming, and
when in his company you felt you
were at the court of a cheeky king.
But he could turn nasty in a fl ash. An
acquaintance of his remembers: “He
would suddenly say things like ‘let’s
fucking shoot him’ and you didn’t
know if he was serious or kidding.”
At the height of his power,ПОДГОТОВИЛАГРУППА"What's News"
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