Ultra

by Tobias Jones

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  There’s often a screaming intensity to the ultra world. One memoir is written entirely in block capitals. But in the Cosenza fanzine, there’s a short piece about how future meetings of the Curva Sud would be organized. ‘We know that our assemblies need to be improved,’ wrote Tubby. Having come through recovery, he understands group meetings and offers his advice: ‘Know how to listen’ and ‘don’t interrupt’.

  He explains to me how he will line the chairs up like a classroom until, when the group regains maturity, it can go back to a circle. ‘This way we’re trying to give still more force to our non-hierarchical chaos.’ In case the planned seminar about how to organize an assembly sounded too heavy, it would be followed, he said, ‘by that joyful and bohemian sociality which has always distinguished us’. It’s hard to imagine a few sentences that better encapsulate Cosenza’s terraces: anarchic, addicted, recovering, chaotic but – most revolutionary of all, especially for Italy and the ultras – learning how to listen.

  Mid-1970s, Turin

  Turin is an august city of wide boulevards and stately palaces. The perpendicular grid is ribboned by two rivers – the Po and the Dora Riparia – that merge near the city’s monumental cemetery where many of the players of the ‘Great Torino’ are buried. The basilica of Superga dominates the skyline, reminding Torinesi of past glories and of mortality. Beyond, but still close, are the whipped-cream peaks of the Alps.

  The first capital of a united Italy, Turin has always felt grand. With its large Jewish and Protestant communities, it feels less obviously Roman Catholic than many Italian cities, and its trams, chocolates and Frankish dialect give it a decidedly Central European air. It’s a region of bon-viveurs who have produced glorious concoctions: not just fine wines like Barbera and Barolo, but all those aromatic drinks like Cinzano, Vermouth and Martini. The city is, most importantly, home to both Juventus and Torino football teams.

  In the years of economic boom throughout the 1960s, Turin had changed radically. The car manufacturer Fiat had brought tens of thousands of workers from the South to its Mirafiori factory. Most were Juventus supporters and if they weren’t, their kids soon became fans. Juventus supporters and the club’s ultra groups have always been unlike all the others. Whereas ultra groups were usually expressions of an organic territorial attachment, that was rarely the case with Juventus. Because of its monotonous success, the club’s fan base wasn’t Turin, or even Piedmont, but the whole of Italy. It’s been estimated that as many as 14 million people in the country support the ‘old lady’ of Italian football, which is why it’s also nicknamed ‘the girlfriend of Italy’. In Turin they called the supporters and players the ‘rigatìn’ (‘the lined ones’) or the ‘gobbi’ (‘the hunchbacks’). Often, the insignia of Juventus ultra groups wasn’t simply the team’s black-and-white (inspired by Notts County’s colours) but also Italy’s tricolour of red, white and green. The colours of the Italian flag suggested not just that the team was constantly winning the scudetto (and in 1971–72, 1972–73 and 1974–75, Juventus won its fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth scudetti) but also that it was a national team.

  As happened almost everywhere, Juventus ultra groups emerged from within the formal fan clubs like Primo Amore (‘First love’) and Juventus Club Filadelfia. The first Juventus ultras had been inspired by the far left and had names like Venceremos (echoing the rallying cry of the Latin American left). One famous left-wing slogan – ‘power has to belong to the workers’ – was transmuted to ‘power has to be black-and-white’. But very soon, other political forces came to the fore. The Panthers dressed like their far-right Lazio counterparts: ‘… camouflage jacket, jeans stuck into the para-boots, bandana on the forehead like the Apaches, the flag as a pretext for the flagpole which was a truncheon…’ There were many political allegiances amongst the thousands of Juventus ultras but there was a rump of Mussolini lovers who were ever-present and who would, as the decades passed, slowly take control of the curva.

  Another of Juventus’s early groups was called Fossa Dei Campioni (‘the Pit of champions’). Its symbol was a winged helmet and, of course, a tricolour on the cuirass. Its leader, Antonio Marinaro, had been born in Melfi, in Basilicata on the instep of the Italian boot. Nobody quite knows why Antonio Marinaro was nicknamed ‘Jackie the Ultra’. Some say it was a simplification of Jekyll, because this hulking man with a Freddy Mercury moustache had two sides – kind and aggressive, gentle and bellowing. Like so many others, he was one of the capo-ultras who found belonging not in his roots, but in his new surroundings. Being an ultra was a way to assert himself despite being an immigrant. It was the same for Pino Fridd n’Pitt (‘Pino Coldheart’), a young tough who had been born in Foggia, in far-off Puglia. In the first game he saw, at the start of the 1977 season, Juventus beat Foggia 6–0 and he decided then to put down roots with the winners.

  The Fossa slowly morphed into a new group called the Fighters. Their iconic leader was Beppe Rossi. With his thick hair, hook nose and winning smile, he was what they call in dialect a ‘baccaglione’, a smooth-talker. The Fighters kept the helmet as a symbol, adding spanners crossed like bones in a pirate flag. (Spanners were one of the preferred weapons of ultras, forceful but rarely lethal.) Rossi, like so many, was slightly obsessed with creating an ‘English’ form of fandom: doing away with the kettle drums and using only hands, voices and scarves. He loved Pink Floyd and the Liverpool anthem, ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’.

  The Juventus choreographies back then were basic. Rossi’s grandmother used to keep spare wood she picked up so he could nail together coffins to symbolize the death of the opposition. One time, an ultra came across hundreds of unused posters of the pop-star Bobby Solo, so they used them in a choreography. It was all fairly naïve compared to what came later and there was no money in it, no incentive other than passion for the team and one’s ultra siblings.

  It was, according to Beppe Franzo – a lifelong Juventus ultra – a ‘spiritual vision of existence’. But this alleged spirituality was often similar to that of those early twentieth-century Mussolinian black shirts who found transcendence in violence. Franzo talks very frankly about what the ultra code has always been: ‘Never step backwards, never abandon your neighbour in the fight, hit hard… The old nature of men through all the ages resurfaces, uncontrolled and uncontrollable.’

  Unlike their Juventus rivals, Torino fans were used to failure. ‘We are,’ wrote two fans, ‘massacred by destiny… we’re trapeze artists of weeping, adept at being ripped off, acrobats of the art of enjoying little…’ One Toro player, quoting something he once heard, put it more bluntly: ‘Supporting Toro is like masturbating with sand.’

  Legends grew up as much around Toro ultras as their under-achieving team. ‘Strega’ – the ‘Witch’ – was a hard-as-nails leader who began a tradition of dressing up as a priest and offering the last rites to Juventus before derby games. Sogliola (‘Sole’, as in the fish) had been to prison so many times that he used to bore people on away trips by describing each prison he saw on the way to the game. Il Pittore (‘the Painter’) made striscioni (banners) so long that he had to sit with his sewing machine by the window, the material flowing from one flat to another, linking people to his maroon creations. People often told the story about him being so nervous during a game that he gripped the icy tubes of the terraces and his hands got stuck. The only way to free him was by using the old-fashioned ‘Alpine solvent’ of urine.

  What keeps all these characters in the collective memory is the fact that, like Lazio two years before, they were the ultra leaders at a time of sporting glory. After decades of suffering, the Torino team began not only to reflect the passion of its fans but its completely unexpected success lent sudden prestige to them.

  Many of the players at the start of the 1975–76 season had been at the club almost all their careers. Paolo Pulici would spend fifteen years at Torino, while the team’s leader was a recently retired player, Giorgio Ferrini, now serving as the assistant
manager. He wasn’t exactly ugly but he looked mean: a bit of acne scarring, a pointed nose, limp hair. In his career, he had used his elbows to such good effect that no one ever got past him and he was nicknamed ‘la Diga’ (‘the dam’). The team now had a defender whose actual surname meant Corporal. The coach was Gigi Radice, called ‘the German’ for his icy eyes and chilly manner. Like Maestrelli before him, he was a coach who brought in players, like Patrizio Sala, that he knew and trusted from his days managing elsewhere. What endeared so many of those players to the ultras was their stubbornness and honesty. One player, Francesco Graziani, was once being courted by the Napoli president but he wouldn’t be wooed by money: ‘I’m sorry, Mr President, I’ve given my word and I only have one.’

  The players had many superstitions and, as they accumulated victories, the more those little actions became entrenched. Paolo Pulici – nicknamed ‘Pupi’ – insisted on leaving the changing room last and the players always sat on the same seats in the bus. The connection with the fans was embodied by a girl who always came out onto her balcony to wave on the team as their coach went to the stadium. If she didn’t appear, they had to stop the bus and wait. The players nicknamed her bagna cauda after the piping, anchovy-flavoured hot-pot prepared by all self-respecting Piedmontese. The ultra world was often male-dominated but amongst Toro ultras, as everywhere, there was a contingent of female ultras who became objects of all the usual male imaginations: goddesses, sisters, mothers, lovers. As one impassioned Toro fan wrote in quasi-erotic prose, those female fans were ‘the priestesses who fed the fire of passion’.

  It was a sensational season because Toro didn’t just win the scudetto, they did so having been six points behind Juventus in an era when only two points were awarded for a win. By late autumn it had seemed that it would be the usual stroll for the hated rivals. But then, on 7 December, Toro won 2–0 against Juventus. They beat Milan at the San Siro and swatted Verona 4–2. It was when they beat Juventus again, in the return match on 28 March, that people began to believe. Toro scored nine goals in two games – against Fiorentina and Cagliari – and sealed the title in a suitably Torino style by drawing the last game of the season in which Toro players scored both goals (one for themselves and one for the opposition).

  The ecstasy wasn’t understated. ‘The Painter’ stuck 5,000 tricolour stickers all over the city. Horns honked long through the night. Many ultras went to stand by the lamppost where Gigi Meroni had lost his life. Almost everyone that emotional summer made the trek up to the Superga Basilica to cry in happiness and pain. And this being Torino, the pain wasn’t over. Within months of that scudetto, ‘the Dam’ – Giorgio Ferrini – suffered two brain aneurysms and died at the age of thirty-seven.

  Present Day, Hotel Centrale, Cosenza

  It is shaped like a boat, the prow nudging close to the dual carriageway. Its facade is glinting white marble and a mosaic of tiny tiles that sparkle in the evening neon. Up top, a glitzy sign announces its name: Hotel Centrale.

  A few men in hoodies are putting a ladder to the side of a glass-fronted atrium that was supposed to become a spa. It’s night but all the lights are off because the hotel was never finished. It was confiscated by magistrates investigating financial crimes during its construction. ‘Mafia association’ and ‘fraudulent bankruptcy’ are the accusations. It’s thought the man building the hotel also embezzled large sums from something called the Field Foundation.

  The men smash a window and crawl into that large greenhouse of an unfinished spa. They’re astonished by the luxury. The tubs, radiators, tiles – everything looks designed and costly. The name of the spa suite, ‘Thala Tepee’, has been carved into the oak door.

  They move away from the glass and pull up the ladder, so that no one from outside knows what’s going on. They are from a loose organization called ‘PrendoCasa’ – literally, ‘I take a house’. They have chosen this date carefully. It’s 30 December, a time of year when police have other priorities. The figurehead of the movement is a lawyer called Ferdinando. He’s a tall man, so unflappable that he seems permanently deadpan. ‘We’re a popular movement which defends those who need housing,’ he says. ‘There are a thousand evictions in Cosenza every year, and that’s only counting the regular, registered rental contracts.’

  There are so many overlaps between PrendoCasa and Cosenza’s ultras that it’s hard to draw any lines between them. Both occupy spaces and defend them, sharing their squats with those in need. And there’s a large overlap of personnel. Both, they say, move in and fight for rights. The squat sign (a zig-zag arrow in a circle) is a regular symbol of the Cosenza curva, and someone has painted ‘Squat the World’ in jazzy lettering outside the Casa Degli Ultrà.

  ‘There’s always been an ultra soul among us,’ says Ferdinando. ‘The first to come to our squats are always people from the terraces. Our squats have become the offices for various ultra groups. There’s not much need for political debate,’ he says. ‘For us it’s normal that if you’ve grown up in the ultra world, you have a certain mentality. Not because of politics as such, but because you’re used to debates about creating a different city.’

  ‘We come from the teachings of the Nuclei Sconvolti [the main ultra group from the 1980s],’ says Vindov. ‘It’s an automatic thing for us to do politics from below.’ Vindov is active in both the ultras and PrendoCasa. He says Cosenza is ‘a welcoming city of solidarity that has maintained the wild and rebel spirit of the Bruttii [the pre-Roman tribes who inhabited the hills and mountains surrounding the city]. Housing occupations are a patrimony for our city, they can usher in a true social innovation from the margins.’

  The men spread out and go through the floors, opening the rooms and seeing more luxurious fittings. There are eight rooms on each of the six floors. The whole hotel seems built deliberately to waste money. ‘This happens all the time,’ says one weary lad. ‘It’s a constant cementification of our city. It suits politicians and constructors to throw up new buildings and vanity projects. Huge sums are chucked at them, the contractors make a mint and disappear before the job is finished, and we’re left with this…’ He throws an arm around a dark, half-finished bathroom with brushed steel towel rails.

  It often seems as if every quango intended to improve housing for Calabrians suffers from corruption, as if the millions on offer are too hard for greedy suits to resist. Millions went missing from Gescal (the ‘GEStione Case per i Lavoratori’ or ‘Workers’ Housing Organization’). Other money ring-fenced for social housing was slipped into a fund to pay for a white bridge over the river that contrasts with the wooden, rotting one a few hundred metres away.

  Because there’s such widespread corruption in city hall, the outlaws of PrendoCasa believe they’re not felons but virtuous activists, and the buildings they occupy are strategically targeted for the message the occupation will send. In November 2016, they moved into an empty building that had once belonged to Aterp, the regional agency for social housing where €100 million had gone missing. There are now fifty-five people living in the former offices, including thirteen kids.

  The plan for this hotel is, as always, to open it up to anyone in need. Ferdinando knows it will be months, if not years, before the Hotel Centrale is auctioned off on behalf of creditors. Until then, the authorities would almost rather have his group there – repairing, heating and fixing – than leave it empty and open to vandals. Within days posters go up around town, urging people to come along to a ‘painting and planting’ day.

  By the following morning, they have sorted out security on the door. They’ve hung a banner over the name of the hotel. ‘Decorate the Centrale in defiance of corruption,’ it says. As people hear about what has happened, they begin to roll up, hoping for a bed. Many are immigrants, often with children.

  Within days they have repaired a few basins. They’ve got electricity in ways that they won’t explain, but which they admit aren’t legal. ‘An occupation is illegal,’ Vindov says, ‘but that’s the only way to give
these people a house.’

  1977–78

  Throughout the mid-1970s ultra groups proliferated. In 1974 Bologna’s Forever Ultras were founded, as were the Ultras Fiorentina. Vicenza’s Vigilantes came together in 1975 and a year later, the Brigate Neroazzure of Atalanta, the Rangers of Empoli and Ultras Livorno came into being. Every year brought new groups: 1977 saw the creation of the Panthers of Salerno, the Boys of Parma, the Ultras Ghetto of Reggio Emilia and so on. Very often those groups were just formal titles given to dozens of fans who had been singing and fighting it out for years.

  That process of consolidation in so many curve wasn’t simply an attempt to deal with political violence but also to bring order to the chaos. Back then, the price of entrance to the stadium was so low that even the poorest in the city could go along. To the teenagers in the vast suburbs of growing cities, the Sunday afternoon behind the goalmouth was a weekly carnival in which the most anonymous could be seen, admired, heard and spoken about. New flags and banners appeared each Sunday. Spontaneous slogans, gestures, songs and all sorts of political positions were trialled in the bear-pit.

  The ultra movement was only one of many Italian insurgencies in the late 1970s and much the least threatening. Mafia turf wars were scarring Sicily and political terrorism was escalating. In 1977 the armed struggle brought new kinds of violence every week, often culminating in shoot-outs between the police, the far right and the far left. Nothing made much sense any more: Francesco Lorusso, a member of Lotta Continua (a leading ultra-left group) was shot dead in March that year. The next day, in seeming revenge, a police officer was shot dead in Turin by a Prima Linea militant (Prima Linea was a terrorist group that had split from Lotta Continua). The following month, again in Turin, a lawyer defending one of the Red Brigades was shot dead. In September, Walter Rossi was killed in Rome whilst distributing fliers protesting fascist violence. As always, many were killed who seemed absurd or irrelevant targets – among them, the deputy editor of Turin’s La Stampa newspaper and a bystander, Roberto Crescenzio.