- The Observer
Focus 11.08.19 39
LEFT
Fabrizio
Piscitelli, aka
Diabolik, lifts the
Coppa Italia in- Il Tempo.it
Lazio ultras
clash with police
after a match
against AS Roma
in Rome in 2015.
GettyABOVE
The bench in
Parco degli
Acquedotti where
Diabolik was
shot last week.
EPAI love my parents...
but live with them?
A
fter graduating three
years ago I moved
back in with my
parents – it was the
most logical thing
to do at the time
as I was only in my fi rst job, so
not having to pay rent in London
was a no-brainer. Unsurprisingly,
I’m not the only to return to the
family home. As it turns out there
is a whole community of us still
living under our parents’ roofs- a community most commonly
referred to as the Boomerang
Generation.
According to the Offi ce for
National Statistics, one in four
young adults aged 20 -34 were
living with their parents in 2018 –
a signifi cant increase on previous
years. With the rent for a home in
big cities rising disproportionately
to our salaries, topped with zero
certainty in jobs and the political
climate, the results are hardly
surprising. Due to astronomical
house prices, if you are lucky
enough to get on the property
ladder in your twenties, it will most
likely be with money loaned or
given to you by your family.
Other generations – particularly
those baby-boomers who were
lucky enough to have reaped the
rewards of a successful economy,
rising property prices and generous
welfare state – might label being
forced to live in the cushy comforts
of your own family home as a fi rst-
world problem, and in some ways
they aren’t wrong. The fridge is
always full; your clothes seem to
appear magically clean and ironed
just a couple days after you’ve
worn them.
Your relationship with your
parents has probably improved as
you’ve left your ungrateful teenage
attitude behind you and you might
even enjoy each other’s company.
And, most importantly, your
fi nancial contributions to all of this
are next to zero.
So what’s the catch? Well,
personally, this wasn’t how I
imagined I would be spending
my mid-twenties. Living under
your parents’ roof after existing
independently for a few years at
university inevitably changes the
family dynamic. On the one hand
there are certain expectations that
One in four young
adults is back home,
including Tess Fawcett.
She explains it’s tough
for her, but just
as hard for
mum and dadcrop up once you move back in –
I now need to pull my own weight
with household chores, for example,
cook dinner twice a week and
contribute towards the weekly food
shop.
Then there are aspects which
are exactly the same as they ever
were: the fi xed dinner times, the
reluctance to watch my “rubbish”
TV programmes in the evening (RIP
Love Island) and having to update
my parents on whether I’ll be at
home for dinner months in advance.
What comes from these requests
is the pressure to not only comply,
but also to be grateful. Whether
it’s not thanking my mum for all
the ironing she does for me, or
forgetting to feed the cat, it is very
easy to seem ungrateful. Living
under your parents’ roof in your
mid-twenties is a constant reminder
that you are not living your own life
yet, a psychological obstacle to your
own identity and freedom.Piscitelli could get anyone he
wanted into the stadium (even,
very showily, himself despite one
of his many stadium bans). Another
Lazio ultra says that for many years
“Piscitelli could do whatever he
wanted ”. A police union represent-
ative once complained, on TV, that
the capo-ultrà was introduced into
certain police corridors that were
closed even to him, the offi cial rep.
Income and connections made
the Irriducibili very powerful.
Toffolo, another leader of the group,
once boasted of being a trade union
leader: “I represent 15,000 people,”
he said. There was absolute unity in
the ranks: four huge speakers were
installed in the curva nord so that
everyone was forced to follow the
leader. Spontaneity was punished ;
dress codes imposed. “No one would
ever dare be arrogant here,” one of
the leaders once told me, “because
we’re a military organisation.” The
group organised riots to stop tax
debts being imposed on Lazio by
the Italian government. It boycotted
newspapers. It even attempted to
take over Lazio itself, fi nanced by
money from organised crime and
using Lazio’s Italo-Welsh legend,
Giorgio Chinaglia , as a frontman.
Piscitelli was taking increasing
risks. He had moved from merchan-
dising into drug dealing, using his
connections to the Neapolitan mob,
the Camorra. His batteria (turf) was
the Ponte Milvio suburb just north
of the Stadio Olimpico. By then the
violence had moved far beyond ter-
race fi sticuffs: Toffolo was twice
knee-capped by unknowns, andLiving under your
parents’ roof in your
mid-twenties is a
constant reminder
that you’re not living
your own life yet
My parents are fully within their
right to expect all of this of me: after
all, it is their house and their rules.
For fear of sounding ungrateful, I
just wish it was my own house, with
my own rules.
However, I know that in order
to have me at home my parents
are sacrifi cing freedoms of their
own. For starters, I’m sure they
don’t actually want me to join in
every time they have a dinner date,
but nevertheless I will always be
invited along.
You hear about “empty nest
syndrome” among parents who
can’t cope once their children
leave for good. But I know that
my parents, like many others, very
much intend on us eventually
leaving the nest. Whether it be
golfi ng, travelling or simply
engaging in a bit of “repowering”, as
the TV presenter Fern Britton put it
last week , surely all parents have a
plan for when their offspring fi nally
move out.
Unfortunately, the current
climate is keeping us at home
much longer than expected and,
instead of seeing the world, they’re
building an extension on to their
homes because the children are
back and they’ve brought their
girlfriends with them. (And maybe a
pet or two, too.)
It’s hard for us millennials, but
spare a thought for our parents, too.the leg of one Irriducibili, having
been chainsawn off, was found in
a tributary to the river Tiber (his
body was never found). Piscitelli
was accused of handling hun-
dreds of kilos of narcotics and
was eventually arrested in 2015
after police followed a pizza deliv-
ery boy to a remote warehouse.
Piscitelli’s hideout contained axes,
swords, truncheons, a pistol and
phone-jammers.H
e was fi rst impris-
oned and then
placed under house
arrest. His vil-
las were confi s-
cated. Other ultra
groups, such as Hit Firm, were snap-
ping at his heels. With years of court
appearances pending, Piscitelli tried
to make a comeback. He made peace
with Claudio Lotito , the Lazio chair-
man against whom he had plotted
for so long. There were more stunts,
like Roman salutes honouring
Mussolini in Milan this spring, and
a comuniqué in which women were
banned from the front 10 rows. It all
generated news and Piscitelli openly
spoke about his hope for a return to
the “years of lead”.
But by then his power, and health,
were on the wane. Ironically for
a terrace in which the far-right
fans forbid recreational drug-use,
Piscitelli was, for much of his life,
an avid drugs user. That drugs use
didn’t add to his emotional stabil-
ity. One psychiatric report (admit-
tedly prepared by his defence team,
in the hope of avoiding a custodial
sentence) portrayed a man who was
prone to frequent bouts of psycho-
sis, paranoia and delusion. Perhaps,
in the end, his criminal contacts
simply thought it was safer to have
him out of the way.
The Irriducibili is still intimidat-
ing. No Lazio ultra will go on the
record to speak ill of the deceased.
But one lifelong fan summed up,
more bluntly than most, what many
Laziali said in private last week:
“Piscitelli ruined the image of Lazio
in the world. Lazio now implies rac-
ism, fascism and collusion with the
Camorra. His was a rabble of crim-
inals.” Diabolik, it’s clear, took fan-
dom far beyond the football.Tobias Jones’s new book, Ultra, is
published on 19 September by Head
of ZeusAt the height of his power,
Piscitelli could get anyone he
wanted into the Lazio stadium
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