I’m not sure why, but I found myself watching, “The Real Football Factories: International" on Challenge TV the other night. It featured the Italian Ultras from Lazio and Roma preparing for the Rome Derby. I’m no fan of football hooliganism. I mean, it’s fair to say I did once find my way into a Parisian jail for a spot rowdy behaviour when I went to watch Arsenal play in a European final many years ago, but I was a rascal then, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was a different person and by gum I learnt my lesson. The French have always hated us anyway.
You see though, there’s a fundamental difference between the Italian version of football hooliganism and the British version. The whole concept may have found it’s genesis in Moss Side or New Cross, but the thuggish, rather base motives your honest to goodness British hooligan had for these kinds of mass conflagrations bear no resemblance to the almost artistic romantic and somewhat noble justifications the Ultras have for kicking peoples heads in on a Sunday.
The Italians essentially are just cooler than us for one thing. They’re better looking, their language is one of the most beautiful in the world, their way of life and culture is just so much more sophisticated than ours and because of this, their football violence is tantamount to an opera or a ballet as opposed to the chaos you’ll see in this country with a herd of blokes charging about lumping bricks at each other. And their fireworks are so pretty.
And, as Barry Norman once said, why not? It’s a rather extreme expression of freedom, but why spend fifty years doing a shitty job? Whoring out your dignity for very little reward other than a measly financial one, most of which goes to the Government whom you didn’t elect and is made up of weasely corrupt sexual deviants you’ll often find in sleazy hotels with a black plastic bin liner over their heads and apple up their arse; people you wouldn’t trust to mow your lawn or baby-sit your children let alone run the country.
You might as well spend your time throwing fireworks and bottles at other Ultras. As long as you have a code, no matter how tenuous, so that your confrontations don’t permeate into the street and you’re not arbitrarily giving shoppers and other innocent citizens a pasting for the hell of it.
It’s a crazy world, I think you’d struggle to make a case for Ultras being any less unscrupulous than Italian politicians or the police or the bakers or the cheese makers, cause most of them are connected to wise guy types aren’t they? Probably. Fair do’s, most of these groups are rather fascist and right wing and what not, but that’s just Italy as a country, they’re not keen on ..well anyone really, they never have been, but they’re not feeding people to lions anymore so they’re making progress.
So the point of all this is what? I don’t know. I just want to feel ok that I was kind of impressed by these people. I'm not saying I want any part of it, even if they had wheelchair access to these riots, but you know, they say this kind of violence shouldn't be glamourised, but if more people got involved in this sort of thing and it was cocooned in this little world, then maybe people would be too knackered during the week to be shitty to each other. Fink abaart it. Ciao.
You see though, there’s a fundamental difference between the Italian version of football hooliganism and the British version. The whole concept may have found it’s genesis in Moss Side or New Cross, but the thuggish, rather base motives your honest to goodness British hooligan had for these kinds of mass conflagrations bear no resemblance to the almost artistic romantic and somewhat noble justifications the Ultras have for kicking peoples heads in on a Sunday.
The Italians essentially are just cooler than us for one thing. They’re better looking, their language is one of the most beautiful in the world, their way of life and culture is just so much more sophisticated than ours and because of this, their football violence is tantamount to an opera or a ballet as opposed to the chaos you’ll see in this country with a herd of blokes charging about lumping bricks at each other. And their fireworks are so pretty.
And, as Barry Norman once said, why not? It’s a rather extreme expression of freedom, but why spend fifty years doing a shitty job? Whoring out your dignity for very little reward other than a measly financial one, most of which goes to the Government whom you didn’t elect and is made up of weasely corrupt sexual deviants you’ll often find in sleazy hotels with a black plastic bin liner over their heads and apple up their arse; people you wouldn’t trust to mow your lawn or baby-sit your children let alone run the country.
You might as well spend your time throwing fireworks and bottles at other Ultras. As long as you have a code, no matter how tenuous, so that your confrontations don’t permeate into the street and you’re not arbitrarily giving shoppers and other innocent citizens a pasting for the hell of it.
It’s a crazy world, I think you’d struggle to make a case for Ultras being any less unscrupulous than Italian politicians or the police or the bakers or the cheese makers, cause most of them are connected to wise guy types aren’t they? Probably. Fair do’s, most of these groups are rather fascist and right wing and what not, but that’s just Italy as a country, they’re not keen on ..well anyone really, they never have been, but they’re not feeding people to lions anymore so they’re making progress.
So the point of all this is what? I don’t know. I just want to feel ok that I was kind of impressed by these people. I'm not saying I want any part of it, even if they had wheelchair access to these riots, but you know, they say this kind of violence shouldn't be glamourised, but if more people got involved in this sort of thing and it was cocooned in this little world, then maybe people would be too knackered during the week to be shitty to each other. Fink abaart it. Ciao.
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