PEOPLE AND PLACES IN THE NEWS
sacked on air by a member of Top Calcio
24’s management, who certainly moved
with an alacrity perhaps denied to the
football federation.
A week later, during the Serie A
game between Atalanta and Fiorentina
- played at the neutral venue of Parma
because Atalanta are currently carrying
out renovations to their home stadium
in Bergamo – Fiorentina’s Brazilian full-
back Dalbert complained to the referee,
Daniele Orsato, that he was the object
of racist chants and monkey noises from
some Atalanta fans.
It is believed that the chants came
from a small number of people but,
even if the majority of spectators at the
Stadio Ennio Tardini could not hear them,
Orsato could. Accordingly, he stopped
the game for three minutes and asked
for the public address system to read out
a warning about racist chants, with the
implied threat that if the chants
continued he would abandon the game.
When the warning was read out,
however, it was greeted with jeers andwhistles by a majority of fans. In the end,
Orsato resumed the game and there
were no further problems.
That incident may have involved just a
handful of spectators, but the reception
provoked by the public announcement
calls for pause for thought.
Senior football writer Maurizio Crosetti
of daily La Repubblica commented:
“There are not just four idiots but rather
thousands of violent racists on too many
terraces in Italy... when the public address
system called on fans to stop their [racist]
chants, practically the entire stadium
responded by booing, and they were
many and fearsome too.
“Rhetoric would have us believe thatthese people are marginal, that there
are not many of them, just a few die-
hard, almost romantic fans. Instead, you
would have to conclude that the heart
of the ultra fan is increasingly being
invaded by evil.”
Nor did FIFA’s Italo-Swiss president
Gianni Infantino play down the
significance of the incident when
commenting on Italian state TV: “In Italy,
the situation with regard to racism has
not improved and this is very serious.
We’ve got to fight this through education,
by condemnation and by talking about it.
“People who are responsible for
these acts should be identified and
then expelled from the stadium.
“I have to pay my compliments to
Orsato. It is never easy to take certain
decisions in the heat of a game.”
After the game, the respective
coaches, Gian Piero Gasperini of Atalanta
and Fiorentina’s Vincenzo Montella,
confessed they had heard nothing, with
Gasperini even suggesting that the whole
incident had been exaggerated.
What will matter now is how the
referee dealt with the incident in his
match report. Depending on this,
disciplinary sanctions may yet be
imposed on Atalanta.
Dalbert, Lukaku and other black
players in Italian football must really
wonder where they have landed.
Paddy Agnew“Either you have 10
bananas wrapped
around your waist to
give him to eat or just
give up” Luciano Passirani