A Season With Verona

by Tim Parks

  The area round the stadium is little more than scorched earth. A vast car park is made of thin strips of decaying asphalt on a bed of desert sand. Immediately out of the coach, we’re funnelled between lines of police toward a tiny prefab kiosk, laughably makeshift beside the huge stadium to one side and the vast empty landscape to the other. Behind thick Perspex, a man is ready to sell us tickets at thirty thousand lire. Everybody thinks this is outrageously expensive.

  ‘Pay and go in,’ we’re told. An official with a radio has come to speak to us.

  ‘We don’t have enough,’ Forza protests. ‘We had to spend it paying damages for something we didn’t even break.’

  ‘Don’t imagine you can get in free. Anybody who doesn’t have the money will have to stay on the bus.’

  ‘Driver,’ Fondo starts shouting. ‘Driver, take me to the puttane. I don’t want to see the game, I want a prostitute. Take me to a prostitute, Dio boia, autista di merda.’

  There’s a fierce wind, something I hadn’t expected, a gale almost, fresh and sharp from the sea, whipping up dust and litter. We’re surrounded by policemen and officials with radios and truncheons and riot helmets. Cain and Albe are confabulating. Would it be possible to break for it and run under the Bari curva with the big banner they’ve brought?

  ‘Bari is a serious curva,’ Cain says. He shakes his head. ‘If the other coaches had arrived at the same time we might have managed. But we never agree on anything.’

  So only now do I realise that another group is coming in two other coaches; except that they were leaving at three in the morning, and they were not from the Zanzibar. ‘They’ll be late, Dio bon,’ Albe says. ‘They’re always late.’ ‘We’re not in a hurry to pay,’ Glass-eye tells a policeman. ‘We’re not in a hurry to go in the ground. It’s early. We want something to eat.’

  We are told in no uncertain terms to go in now, immediately, or miss the game. We’ll be taken to hospital to check alcohol levels. ‘You’re not going in the ground for a start,’ Glass-eye is told. ‘You’re drunk. Nor you,’ the official turns to Fondo.

  ‘The carabiniere is a bomba,’ Fondo begins. ‘In the stadium there’s a bomba. Autista di merda. Drive us to the puttane. I want a puttana.’

  He’s taken his T-shirt off and his torso is surprisingly handsome and tanned. Then he starts to run around as if looking for a place to break out of the police cordon. Immediately they block him. He runs back and throws himself against the glass of the kiosk, hands outspread. Then he tries to climb over it, gets a foot on the base of the window. The police pin him down. His minders rush to look after him, to pull him away from trouble. ‘Can’t you see, he’s just a bit excited, Dio bon. Don’t worry, we’ll look after him.’ And they shout in outrage, ‘What’s he done? Leave him alone, Dio boia.’

  I’m getting used to the exercise now. It’s a false confrontation. They’re going to arrive at the point where there is shouting and insult and outrage and then they’re going to do exactly what they’re told. And in a way it is outrageous that we’ve come all the way to Bari and we can’t even go to the seaside, or look at the town or have a pizza. Five hundred and fifty miles and we won’t see anything, maybe not even the game. But if you want to be a deviant group and shout racist slogans, if you want the honour of a cage then in the end you have to accept it. And in the end after a show of severity the authorities also are going to back down and compromise, as they always do in Italy: Fondo, Glass-eye and Pista are all let in free, having no doubt spent far more than thirty thousand on booze and dope.

  Through the turnstiles we’re severely frisked, then we’re let loose to walk fifty metres between what must once have been flowerbeds, planted perhaps for the third-place final between England and Italy, back in 1990. Now they are just arid stretches of soil and stones.

  Forza is disgusted. ‘See the south,’ he speaks to me for the first time. At once I recognise the voice of the northern Italian explaining to the foreigner that he will never be able to understand the perversity of the south. ‘Look at it. This is the south. They frisk you, then they let you walk across an area where you could fill your pockets with stones, Dio boia. With big stones, Dio can. The size of your fist.’

  He’s right. We could all pick up handfuls of stones. But perhaps what really makes the brigate uneasy is the way this carelessness exposes how tame they are. At least today. Because nobody picks up anything. Nobody’s interested in trouble. Only, as we break out into the vast and empty stadium, Pista, Glass-eye and a couple of the younger kids start up the most amazing chorus of foul insults.

  The stadium is huge and as ugly within as it is impressive without. The terraces are too steep. You’re afraid you might fall down the high steps. The wind is fierce through the big gaps between the separate segments. It swirls and hums round the stadium in sudden eddies, lifting the litter scattered everywhere. There’s litter on the terraces. They haven’t been cleaned. Even the pitch is strewn with litter, plastic bags and torn newspapers, lifted and tossed by the wind. Properly drunk, you might easily mistake the place for the second circle of Dante’s hell where those who gave themselves over to passion were forever blown about against their will, shrieking and clapping their hands and cursing the power of God.

  Clapping his hands, bare-breasted despite the growing chill, Pista begins to curse into the wind and the echoey stadium.

  ‘Africani, Dio boia!’

  ‘Animali, Dio can!’

  ‘Albanesi, Dio boia!’

  ‘Criminali, Dio can!’

  ‘Kurdi, Dio boia!’

  ‘Terroni, Dio porco!’

  ‘Contrabandisti!’ (Smugglers.)

  ‘Zingari!’ (Gypsies.)

  ‘Froci!’ (Queers.)

  ‘Bestie!’ (Beasts.)

  ‘Tua madre lo prende in culo!’ (Your mother takes it up the ass.)

  ‘Tuo padre è cornuto!’ (Your father’s a cuckold.)

  ‘Scafisti di merda!’ (The scafisti are those who run the big rubber motorboats that daily bring illegal immigrants from Albania, a group notorious for the ruthlessness with which they will throw children into the sea when being chased by the coastguards.)

  ‘Tua madre è una puttana, scopa con tutti!’ (Your mother’s a whore and fucks everyone.)

  ‘Le nostre tasse pagano per voi!’ (Our taxes pay for you.)

  ‘Non esistete senza di noi.’ (You wouldn’t exist without us: that is, without the rich taxpaying north.)

  Etc.

  Glass-eye joins in. It goes on and on as the rest of us spread out over the small segment allotted to us. Then finally there’s a moment of wild comedy, a moment that unmasks the mad theatre of it all. They’ve been at it a good twenty minutes, Pista and Glass-eye, leaning over the parapet, shrieking insult after insult at the sparse huddles of Bari fans all around, when a particularly strong gust of wind carries off Glass-eye’s cap, his Verona-Champions-of-Italy-1985 cap. It soars up in the air, sails beautifully across the high fence at the side of the segment, crosses the gap between segments and lands gently on an empty section of terraces defended by a line of policemen who have evidently been positioned to prevent any Bari fans from running up to the fence and throwing things at us.

  ‘I’ve lost my hat, give me my hat back!’ Then rather surprisingly Glass-eye adds, ‘Per favore, please!’ And then: ‘Dio boia, give me back my hat!’

  The police won’t budge. They have their blue riot helmets and gas canisters. There must be at least three hundred police to about forty-five of us.

  ‘My hat, Dio boia, my old hat.’ It wouldn’t be easy to get hold of a genuine 1985 Verona champions of Italy hat. ‘I was ten years old, Dio can!’ Verona are not likely to be champions again. Faced with such a grievous loss, Glass-eye suddenly seems to be acting like the most normal of people. ‘Ragazzi,’ he shouts to the Bari fans beyond the police. ‘Abbiate pietà!’ Have mercy. His voice is hoarse with yelling. ‘Please, can you get me my old hat!’

  The Bari fans all have red-and-white
scarves. A couple of youngsters move up to the police line, but the police turn them back. The wind is howling. The litter is shifting back and forth and the hat twitches and rolls on the terraces. The Verona fans begin to shriek at the police: ‘He only wants his fucking hat. What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you human. Animals! Our taxes pay for you.’

  The stand-off drags on for about five minutes. The police are impassive. Their orders are to keep the opposing fans apart at all costs. They look at the Veronese as if they came from another planet, some of them occasionally grinning at each other, the way one grins at the antics of monkeys at the zoo. Then at last two brave Bari fans rush through the police line and make a dash to the hat. A few policemen follow, but half-heartedly. They’re not going to get rough with the locals. The fans pounce on the hat. ‘Hellas,’ it says: ‘Campioni d’Italia 1985’, the year my son was born.

  My first thought then was that the Bari boys were going to make off with the hat, as a punishment for all the insults they’d been hearing. Perhaps they would burn it, and chant Verona Verona, vaffanculo, staple cry of opposing fans. But in the event the tallest boy comes up to the fence, perhaps three yards from Glass-eye, and, waiting for a lull in the wind, concentrating so as to make sure the hat will go over the high fence and then across the frightening gap in the cement floor, he tosses the precious thing into the air and it comes spinning down on our side.

  Immediately, the Verona fans are roaring approval. ‘Ba-ri! Ba-ri!’ they applaud. The Bari fans behind the police strike up a cry of ‘Lecce Lecce vaffanculo’, Lecce being their nearest and so most-hated rivals. Taking the prompt, the brigate join in. ‘Lecce Lecce vaffanculo.’ In the silence that follows, Glass-eye yells, ‘OK, enough of that, insults in the other direction,’ and, turning away from the fans to the left, who recovered his hat, he and Pista walk to the other side of the enclosure and start to insult the fans on the right:

  ‘Albanesi, Dio boia!’

  ‘Criminali, Dio can!’

  ‘Terroni, Dio porco!’

  So, a situation has been created where the simple gesture of recovering a hat takes on huge significance in the teeth of concentration camp conditions. That Bari boy will go home proud to have faced the police and picked up that Verona Campioni d’ltalia cap. How could he have experienced emotions like that if he’d watched the game on TV?

  Meanwhile, thanks to the cage we’re in and the cordon of police around us, the brigate can enjoy an orgy of community spirit. Nobody has to decide how far they’re going to go, because it’s impossible to go anywhere. Nobody need criticise the excesses of the others, because excesses can only get so far. When the other two coachloads arrive half an hour before the game, the terrace mills with boys embracing. There are even a few girls. One can only hope the players will show the same group spirit.

  Let’s compare players and fans.

  Sleepless and wild, the brigate travelled through the night in the most uncomfortable conditions. The team no doubt came down yesterday by plane and spent the night in a four-star hotel.

  Smoking to a man, eating poorly, drinking heavily, the brigate are not in the best physical condition. The team work out hours every day under the guidance of experts and the care of specialised medical staff.

  The brigate all hail from inside an area of about fifty square kilometres. They speak a highly specific regional dialect. The team includes a Dane, a Serb, a Croatian, a Romanian, a Brasilian and then a dozen boys from all over the bel paese. Our captain, the much beloved Leo Colucci, is himself from Bari. One hopes they can all communicate in standard Italian.

  The brigate have known each other as long as they have known anyone. Most probably they have been friends since nursery school. They care deeply about Hellas Verona. Gilardino, our new striker, arrived in Verona on Thursday morning and has had only one training session with the team. The goalkeeper is new this year. The two wingbacks are new. Two members of the midfield are new and one attacker. They don’t give a damn about Hellas Verona, except in so far as their own prospects are furthered or damaged by the team’s performance.

  So what relation can there possibly be between the hundred and fifty bleary beery boys around me and the eleven individual careerists now trotting out on to the field? The answer is simple: the fans must communicate to the players the one hugely positive thing they have, a sense of unity. The Brigate Gialloblù can give Colucci & Co. what no television camera ever can, an immediate vocal response to whatever they do, a response of admiration, or of scorn, but above all of encouragement, a sense of urgency. And this surely is the agony of the football business manager: that in the end the game does need these wild boys to make it work. A huge injection of excitement, of spilt libido and perverted civic pride, is absolutely necessary.

  From the moment the team step out on to the field, a transformation takes place in the brigate. The individual insults stop. The boys are now solid as a well-trained chorus line. They give their voices generously, unceasingly. They do a job, a job that is actually admired by conservative members of society, sports commentators, marketing men and the like. Despite being hopelessly outnumbered and sometimes quite overwhelmed by surrounding voices, they are nevertheless compact and reliable. They obey a well-established hierarchy, responding immediately to cues from their leaders. They never flag, they never disobey. In short, from now until half-time they will not stop clapping and singing and chanting. It’s exhausting. It’s heroic.

  ‘Con il mare negli occhi e il sole nel cuore, Bari ti giuriamo eterno amore.’ So says the main banner the Bari fans have opened out right across the lower parapet of their curva: With the sea in our eyes and the sun in our hearts, Bari we swear our eternal love. The south, I reflect, watching the boys work out on the pitch before the game, does tend to be a little more sentimental than the north.

  Their other main banner reads: ‘We honour the colours of our city.’ There’s a fantastic medieval solemnity about it. On Verona’s website, The Wall, in the endless debate over the selling and buying of players this summer, somebody responded to the idea of boycotting the stadium with the line: ‘The brigate honour the colours gialloblù, not the players, not the trainer, not the owner, only the colours.’ On the coach the boys sang: ‘Players and trainers come and go, but we are for ever, for ever, brigate, brigate gialloblù.’ What delirium! What security in the close ties of an undying community! And from this chant they go straight into their corruption of the song of the glorious Bersaglieri, perhaps Italy’s only crack military regiment: ‘Aprite le porte, che passano, che passano, aprite le porte, che passano i gialloblù!’ Open the doors, the yellow-blues are passing through. And this when we all know that most probably they won’t be passing through at all. The chances are that we will be going under today. Bari have a good record at home. It’s not easy to start the season with an away game against a direct relegation rival. Bari are fielding the same team they had last year, with the same manager. They will be solid and determined.

  ‘Open the doors, the yellow-blues are coming through!’ Sober and drunk alike, the brigate sing with all their might. Am I myself so fanatic? I’ve often wondered about the way I switch back and forth from ‘we’ to ‘they’ when I talk about Verona. I’ve often wondered over the years how badly the team would have to play for me to stop going to watch. It almost happened last season. There was a moment when I gave up, when I lost faith. It was a game that, had it finished as it was at half-time, would have meant the end for me.

  This was immediately after Christmas. Halfway through the season, Verona were second to bottom. We had come up to Serie A three years before, promptly gone back down again, come up once more after two seasons in the miserable and violent Serie B, and now it looked as though we were going right back down again. The opposition that particular Sunday was Parma, a classy side, winners of the penultimate Cup Winners’ Cup, participants in the Champions’ League. They had international stars like Crespo, Thuram, Cannavaro, Benarrivo, Amoroso.

  To keep hope
s alive, Verona needed a result at all costs and started out with great determination, scoring after only three minutes. Parma didn’t even look perturbed. Rightly so. It wasn’t long before they had equalised and by half-time they were ahead three–one. ‘This is it,’ I told my son. ‘We’re going down. I can’t bear it. I can’t watch it.’ It wasn’t just the result, it was the extent to which the team were outclassed, the ease with which Parma were dismissing us. If football were purely an aesthetic experience, I should have been able to enjoy this, to admire it, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t enjoy the absolutely splendid way Crespo & Co. were destroying us. I have invested too much emotion in this team, I thought. And I thought: with the excuse of being with my son, of coming to the stadium with my son, I have embarked, over a period of some years now, in supporting a second-rate provincial side, to wit Hellas Verona F.C., something I am no doubt doing to satisfy all kinds of infantile dreams which hardly bear investigation. And now the side is letting me down. The boys are making a fool of me. Hellas Verona football club is not my destiny, I decided, not in the way it is for these people around me, these people who grew up speaking the local dialect, who cannot imagine a different life. I can tear myself away from this, I thought. I can say ‘they’ not ‘we’. I can and must detach myself.

  Before the half-time break was over I had formally and finally decided to become less interested, to forget next year’s season ticket, to call it a day. It’s a reaction I often have with Italy in general. This is not necessarily my destiny, I will tell myself, when something goes seriously wrong, something particularly and miserably Italian, some tussle with Bourbonic bureaucracy, or the nth wildcat strike on the Milan metro. You could leave this place, Tim, I announce. I say these things out loud sometimes. You are merely resident here. You could go tomorrow if you wanted to. Tomorrow! How many times have I told myself that?