by Bill Buford
And so we remained: standing, surrounded by a police guard and angry Italians, while somebody looked for a place to put the visiting English. At least I hoped somebody was doing that. At some point, during this long wait, the Italian supporters at the very top of the stadium—the top row that could overlook the grounds outside—realized that there was a gaggle of English below them. It must have been an exciting discovery: unlike their compatriots, they were not circumvented by a police cordon; they could—within the laws of gravity—do whatever they wanted. And they did. I remember the moment, looking up into the evening’s pink sky, and watching the long, long slow arc of an object hurled from far above as it came closer and closer, gaining speed as it approached, until finally, in those milliseconds before it disclosed its target, I could actually make out what it was—a beer bottle—and then, crash: it shattered within three feet of one of the supporters.
Distant muted laughter from up high.
I feared what would follow. An English supporter went down, his forehead cut open. A policeman looked on. He was at a loss about what to do, even though his choices seemed fairly obvious: he could help the injured supporter (an ethical impossibility, since the supporter was a violent criminal); he could send police into the ground to stop the miscreants above us (an ethical contradiction, since they were the ones needing protection); he could move the English supporters into a more sheltered position, which must not have occurred to the policeman because what he did was this: nothing. He continued staring blankly as more things rained down upon us. Eventually he became a target as well. Eventually we all became targets, helpless underneath a barrage that consisted principally of beer bottles and oranges. There were so many bottles and so many oranges that the pavement, covered with juice and pulp and skins, was sticky to look at and sparkled from the shattered glass.
Mr Wicks appeared, having arrived in an embassy car. He looked frantic and pale. As he hurried past, I heard him mutter, perhaps as a muted greeting, ‘Fucking Boss.’
Alas, Mr Wicks. He may have lost his friendliness but he retained his democratic principles to the end. He must have known that this was his last chance to prevent what he now knew was certain to happen. Was there any possible doubt? He had the police at his disposal; he had the perfect excuse—no seats! Wasn’t this the time to gather everyone together and bundle them back to England? But, no, Mr Wicks, the democrat, did this: alternating between English and Italian, he shouted first for the beleaguered Jackie, whom he found hiding behind a policeman—the missiles, despite Mr Wicks’s intervention, continued to fall from above—and demanded to know why there were no seats. He then shouted at the police officer in charge, dramatically pointing (the gestures, I thought, were impressively Mediterranean) to the ground around them with its array of objects recently shattered or smashed or squashed from impact. And then he shouted at one of the stadium stewards, who began shouting instructions to the other stadium officials, with the result that in very little time we were told that a space inside had been cleared to accommodate the English supporters.
When finally we were ushered through a tunnel that led to the ground, police in front and police behind, it became apparent that, while the English supporters may have been accommodated, their accommodation wasn’t in the most salubrious part of the stadium. We were heading for the bottom steps of the terraces, directly beneath the very people who had been hurling missiles at us while we waited outside.
I did not like the look of this.
I kept thinking of the journalist from the Daily Star, the one who ran off when things got violent. He emerged in my mind now as an unequivocally sympathetic figure. He had, the supporters said, shit himself, and it was worth noting that this phrase had now entered my vocabulary.
I was not, I found myself muttering, going to shit myself.
One by one, we walked from out of the darkness of the tunnel into the blinding light of the ground—the sun, though setting, was at an angle and still shining bright—and it was hard to make out the figures around us. There were not many police—I could see that—and it appeared that Italians had spilled on to the pitch in front of the terraces where we were meant to stand, separated only by a chain-link perimeter fence. Once again things were coming at us from the air: not just bottles and pieces of fruit but also long sticks—the staffs of Juventus flags—firecrackers and smoke bombs. The first one out of the tunnel, drunk and arrogant and singing about his English pride, was hit on the back of the head by an eight-foot flag pole and he dropped to the concrete terrace. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a Union Jack had been set alight, its flames fanned as it was swirled in the air. I saw this only out of the corner of my eye because I was determined not to look up at the Italians above me who were hurling things down, or down to the Italians below who were hurling things up. I had the suspicion that if I happened to make eye-contact with anybody I would be rewarded with a knock on the head. Also I didn’t want to lose my concentration. Looking straight ahead, I was concentrating very hard on chanting my new refrain.
I will not shit myself, I will not shit myself.
As we arrived at the patch of concrete allocated for us, television cameramen appeared along the edges of the pitch. They looked Italian (thin, not beer-drinking) and were squatting between the missile-throwing Juventus fans. There was also a number of newspaper photographers. They looked English (fat, clearly beer-drinking). The curious thing about both the television and newspaper men was this: they were only a couple of feet away from the masked, missile-throwing Juventus fans. They could see that the English supporters were being felled—several people were on their knees holding their heads. I couldn’t help thinking: it wouldn’t take much effort to grab someone’s arm, just as it was pulled back to hurl another pole or flare or smoke bomb or beer bottle; it would take even less effort to give one of them a little nudge; it would take virtually no effort at all to say a word or two urging these masked terrorists of the terraces to stop behaving in this way. Nobody did a thing. And while there is the old argument that to have done so would have been considered interventionist—participating in the event that they were meant to be reporting—for me, as one of the targets, such an argument was not very persuasive. They were not worried about getting in the way of the event. They were trying to create it: not only were they not stopping the masked, missile-throwing Juventus fans, but they were also not photographing them. It was images of the English they wanted.
They wanted the English tattoos; their sweaty torsos, stripped to the waist; their two fingers jabbing the air; the vicious expressions on their faces as they hurled back the objects that had been thrown at them. Italians behaving like hooligans? Unheard of. English behaving like English? That was interesting! I remember thinking: if the day becomes more violent, who do you blame? The English, whose behaviour on the square could be said to have been so provocative that they deserved whatever they got? The Italians, whose welcome consisted in inflicting injuries upon their visitors? Or can you place some of the blame on these men with their television equipment and their cameras, whose misrepresentative images served only to reinforce what everyone had come to expect.
Somehow the match started, was played, ended. And, while it could be said that there was no single serious incident, it could also be said that there was no moment without one. Several people were hurt, and one supporter was taken away to hospital. During the half-time break, when yet another Manchester lad was felled by a beer bottle, the English supporters, with a sudden roar, rushed to the top of the terraces, trying to climb the wall that separated them from the Italians. The wall was too high to scale, and the supporters ended up jumping up and down, trying to grab the Italians by their shoes until the police arrived to pull them away.
Police kept pouring through the tunnel, now wearing riot gear—moon helmets and blue uniforms instead of green—with obvious instructions to place themselves between each English supporter and everybody else. It was evident that the police continued to regard the English
supporters as the problem, and they probably were simply by the fact that they were there. But they were not the only problem, which the police discovered after surrounding every English supporter and ignoring the Italians above them, who, in that uninhibited way that has come to characterize the Mediterranean temperament, continued to express their strong feelings: by the end it appeared to me that the police were being struck down more frequently than the English.
It was a peculiar setting for watching a sporting event, although, oddly, it didn’t seem so at the time. The day had consisted of such a strange succession of events that, by this point in the evening, it was the most natural thing in the world to be watching a football game surrounded by policemen: there was one on my left, another on my right, two directly behind me and five in front. It didn’t bother me; it certainly didn’t bother the supporters, who, despite the distractions, were watching the match with complete attentiveness. And when Manchester United equalized, the goal was witnessed, as it unfolded, by everyone there (except me; I was looking over my shoulder for missiles), and jubilation shot through them, their cheers and songs suddenly tinny and small in that great cavity of the Juventus football ground, its seventy thousand Italians now comprehensively silent. The United supporters jumped up and down, fell over each other, embraced.
But the euphoria was brief. In the final two minutes Juventus scored again. The exhilaration felt but minutes before by that small band of United supporters was now felt—magnified many times—by the seventy thousand Italian fans who, previously humiliated, directed their powerful glee into our corner. The roar was deafening, invading the senses like a bomb.
And with that explosive roar, the mood changed.
What happened next is confusing to recall. Everything started moving at great speed. Everything would continue to move at great speed for many hours. I remember that riot police started kicking one of the supporters who had fallen down. I remember hearing that Sammy had arrived and then coming upon him. He was big, well-dressed, with heavy horn-rimmed glasses that made him look like a physics student, standing underneath the bleachers, his back to the match, an expensive leather bag and camera (Nikon) hanging over his shoulder, having just come from France by taxi. I remember watching Ricky and Micky, the improbable pair I had met on my early-morning minibus in London, scooting underneath the stands, exploiting the moment in which the Italians were embracing, crushed together in their celebrations, to come away with a handful of wallets, three purses and a watch, got by reaching up from below the seats. And I remember some screaming: there had been a stabbing (I didn’t see it) and, with the screaming, everyone bolted—animal speed, instinct speed—and pushed past the police and rushed for the exit. But the gate into the tunnel was locked, and the United supporters slammed into it.
It was impossible to get out.
Throughout this last period of the match, I had been hearing a new phrase: ‘It’s going to go off.’
It’s going to go off, someone said, and his eyes were glassy, as though he had taken a drug.
If this keeps up, I heard another say, then it’s going to go off. And the phrase recurred—it’s going to go off, it’s going to go off—spoken softly, but each time it was repeated it gained authority.
Everyone was pressed against the locked gate, and the police arrived moments later. The police pulled and pushed in one direction, and the supporters pushed in another, wanting to get out. It was shove and counter-shove. It was crushing, uncomfortable. The supporters were humourless and determined.
It’s going to go off.
People were whispering.
I heard: ‘Watch out for knives. Zip up your coat.’
I heard: ‘Fill up your pockets.’
I heard: ‘It’s going to go off. Stay together. It’s going to go off.’
I was growing nervous and slipped my notebook into my shirt, up against my chest, and buttoned up my jacket. A chant had started: ‘United. United. United.’ The chant was clipped and sure. ‘United. United. United.’ The word was repeated, United, and, through the repetition, its meaning started changing, pertaining less to a sporting event or a football club and sounding instead like a chant of unity—something political. It had become the chant of a mob.
‘United. United. United. United. United. United . . .’
And then it stopped.
There was a terrible screaming, a loud screaming, loud enough to have risen above the chant. The sound was out of place; it was a woman’s screaming.
Someone said that it was the mother of the stabbed boy.
Someone said that it was no such thing, just a ‘fucking Eyetie’.
The screaming went on. It appeared that a woman had been caught by the rush to get away and swept along by it. I spotted her: she was hemmed in and thrashing about, trying to find some space, some air. She couldn’t move towards the exit and couldn’t move away from it, and she wasn’t going to be able to: the crush was too great, and it wouldn’t stay still, surging back and forth by its own volition, beyond the control of anyone in it. She was very frightened. Her scream, piercing and high-pitched, wouldn’t stop. She started hyperventilating, taking in giant gulps of air, and her screams undulated with the relendess rhythm of her over-breathing: it was as if she were drowning in her own high-pitched oxygen, swinging her head from side to side, her eyes wild. I thought: Why hasn’t she passed out? I was waiting for her to lose consciousness, for her muscles to give up, but she didn’t pass out. The scream went on. Nobody around me was saying a word. I could tell that they were thinking what I was thinking, that she was going to have a fit, that she was going to die, there, now, pressed up against them. It went on, desperate and unintelligible and urgent.
And then someone had the sense to lift her up and raise her above his shoulders—it was so obvious—and he passed her to the person in front of him. And he passed her to the person in front of him. And in this way, she was passed, hand to hand, above everyone’s heads, still screaming, still flailing, slowly making her way to the exit, and then, once there, the gate was opened to let her out.
And it was all that was needed. Once the gate had been opened, the English supporters surged forwards, pushing her heavily to one side.
I was familiar with the practice of keeping visiting supporters locked inside at the end of a match until everyone had left, and of using long lines of police, with horses and dogs, to direct the visitors to their coaches. The plan in Turin had been the same, and the police were there, outside the gate, in full riot regalia, waiting for the United supporters. But they weren’t ready for what came charging out of the tunnel.
For a start, owing to the trapped woman, the supporters came out earlier than expected—the streets were filled with Juventus supporters—and when they emerged, they came out very fast, with police trailing behind, trying to keep up. They came as a mob, with everyone pressed together, hands on the shoulders of the person in front, moving quickly, almost at a sprint, racing down the line of police, helmets and shields and truncheons a peripheral blur. The line of police led to the coaches, but just before the coach door someone in the front veered sharply and the mob followed. The police had anticipated this and were waiting. The group turned again, veering in another direction, and rushed out into the space between two of the coaches. It came to a sudden stop, and I slammed into the person in front of me, and people slammed into me from behind: the police had been there as well. Everyone turned round. I don’t know who was in front—I was trying only to keep up—and nothing was being said. There were about two hundred people crushed together, but they seemed able to move in unison, like some giant, strangely co-ordinated insect. A third direction was tried. The police were not there. I looked behind: the police were not there. I looked to the left and the right: there was no police anywhere.
What was the duration of what followed? It might have been twenty minutes; it seemed longer. It was windy and dark, and the trees, blowing back and forth in front of the street lamps, cast long, moving shadows
. I was never able to see clearly.
I knew to follow Sammy. The moment the group broke free, he had handed his bag and camera to someone, telling him to give them back later at the hotel. Sammy then turned and started running backwards. He appeared to be measuring the group, taking in its size.
The energy, he said, still running backwards, speaking to no one in particular, the energy is very high. He was alert, vital, moving constantly, looking in all directions. He was holding out his hands, with his fingers outstretched.
Feel the energy, he said.
There were six or seven younger supporters jogging beside him, and it would be some time before I realized that there were always six or seven younger supporters jogging beside him. When he turned in one direction, they turned with him. When he ran backwards, they ran backwards. No doubt if Sammy had suddenly become airborne there would have been the sight of six or seven younger supporters desperately flapping their arms trying to do the same. The younger supporters were in fact very young. At first I put their age at around sixteen, but they might have been younger. They might have been fourteen. They might have been nine: I take pleasure, even now, in thinking of them as nothing more than overgrown nine-year-olds. They were nasty little nine-year-olds who, in some kind of pre-pubescent confusion, regarded Sammy as their dad. The one nearest me had a raw, skinny face with a greasy texture that suggested an order of fish’n’chips. He was the one who turned on me.
Who the fuck are you?
I said nothing, and Fish’n’chips repeated his question—Who the fuck are you?—and then Sammy said something, and Fish’n’chips forgot about me. But it was a warning: the nine-year-old didn’t like me.
Sammy had stopped running backwards and had developed a kind of walk-run, which involved moving as quickly as possible without breaking into an outright sprint. Everybody else did the same: the idea, it seemed, was to be inconspicuous—not to be seen to be actually running, thus attracting the attention of the police—but nevertheless to jet along as fast as you could. The effect was ridiculous: two hundred English supporters, tattooed torsos tilted slightly forwards, arms straight, hurtling stiffly down the pavement, believing that nobody was noticing them.
