2007 Catania football violence
Encyclopedia
Catania
Catania is an Italian city on the east coast of Sicily facing the Ionian Sea, between Messina and Syracuse. It is the capital of the homonymous province, and with 298,957 inhabitants it is the second-largest city in Sicily and the tenth in Italy.Catania is known to have a seismic history and...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
. The clashes occurred during and after the Serie A
Serie A
Serie A , now called Serie A TIM due to sponsorship by Telecom Italia, is a professional league competition for football clubs located at the top of the Italian football league system and has been operating for over eighty years since 1929. It had been organized by Lega Calcio until 2010, but a new...
match between Catania
Calcio Catania
Calcio Catania is an Italian football club founded in 1908 and based in Catania, Sicily. The club has spent much of its history in Serie B, gaining promotion to Italy's top league Serie A five times...
and Palermo
U.S. Città di Palermo
Unione Sportiva Città di Palermo is an Italian football club from Palermo, Sicily which currently plays in Serie A, the top level of Italian football. Formed in 1900 as Anglo Panormitan Athletic and Football Club, the club had various names before assuming its final form in 1987 and is currently...
football clubs, also known as the Sicilian derby
Sicilian derby
The Derby di Sicilia is a local derby between Italian football clubs Calcio Catania and U.S. Città di Palermo. Catania and Palermo are the two main cities on the island of Sicily, and the teams are fierce rivals...
. Police officer Filippo Raciti
Filippo Raciti
Filippo Raciti was an Italian police officer who was killed in a violent confrontation between Calcio Catania football supporters and police officers....
, 40, was killed.
Events
F.C. Messina Peloro
Associazione Calcio Rinascita Messina is an Italian football club based in Messina, Sicily. It currently plays in Serie D.- Brief history :The origins of the team go back to 1900 when Messina F.C was founded in the city. The club has spent most of its history in the lower Italian football leagues...
), was originally scheduled to be played on February 4 at 3 pm. However, after requests from the Catania management, the Lega Nazionale Professionisti brought the match forward to February 2, with 6 pm as the scheduled kick-off time, in order to avoid clashing with the official St. Agatha
Agatha of Sicily
Saint Agatha of Sicily is a Christian saint. Her memorial is on 5 February. Agatha was born at Catania, Sicily, and she was martyred in approximately 251...
celebrations in Catania.
The match started without the Palermo supporters, who arrived in the stadium ten minutes after the beginning of the second half, allegedly because of organizational problems. After the Palermo supporters' entrance, with Palermo leading 1–0 thanks to a controversial goal by Andrea Caracciolo
Andrea Caracciolo
Andrea Caracciolo , is an Italian footballer who plays for Genoa.-Career:His first football appearances were for Sancolombano of Italian Serie D ; later playing for Como and Pro Vercelli, both in professional leagues, before being signed by Brescia, the team in which he made his Serie A debut on 6...
, the throwing of smoke bombs and firecrackers started, forcing the police to reply by throwing tear-gas canisters towards the Ultras
Ultras
Ultras are a type of sports fans renowned for their fanatical support and elaborate displays. They are predominantly European followers of football teams...
(groups of football supporters). As a result, the match referee Stefano Farina
Stefano Farina
Stefano Farina is a retired Italian football referee.In a 27-year career, he has refereed several high-profile matches in Serie A and the UEFA Champions League, including the 2006 UEFA Super Cup in Monaco...
decided to suspend the match for over forty minutes, in part because tear gas had drifted into the stadium and was affecting the players. After the end of the match, won 2–1 by Palermo, Catania supporters outside the venue began attacking members of the police force; Raciti died during these incidents, a fatality which was found to be due to severe liver injuries caused by a blunt object, contradicting an initial hypothesis which claimed his death was caused by a homemade explosive device. The local magistrate assured there was no direct responsibility by Palermo supporters in the events.
Aftermath
Terza Categoria
Terza Categoria is the name of the lowest level of "amateur" football in Italy. It is considered to be the 10th and lowest level in the Italian football league system. Each individual league winner within the Terza Categoria level progresses to their closest regional league in the Seconda...
league match.
Events in Catania led Italian Football Federation commissioner Luca Pancalli
Luca Pancalli
Luca Pancalli is a sports manager and former swimmer. He is currently the Commissioner of the Italian Football Federation....
to cancel all football-related events in the country, including all professional and amateur league matches, as well as all national team matches. The whole football world strongly condemned the events, showing full support for Pancalli's decision to stop all football activities in Italy, and suggested a solution akin to the UK's Football Spectators Act 1989
Football Spectators Act 1989
The Football Spectators Act 1989 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom enacted during the premiership of Margaret Thatcher. Its provisions apply primarily to football matches played in England and Wales...
, the goal of which was to wipe out football hooliganism.
Catania chairman and owner Antonino Pulvirenti announced his willingness to leave the football world, stating it was not possible to go on "doing football" in the city of Catania. A couple of days later he reconsidered.
The day after the event, graffiti
Graffiti
Graffiti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any manner on property....
appeared in the headquarters of local newspaper Il Tirreno
Il Tirreno
Il Tirreno is a regional Italian newspaper, which is printed in Livorno and published in Tuscany. Il Tirreno also features sixteen local editions around the whole region....
in Livorno, hailing the riot as revenge for the 2001 death of anti-globalization rioter Carlo Giuliani
Carlo Giuliani
Carlo Giuliani was an Italian anti-globalist who was shot dead by a police officer during the demonstrations against the Group of Eight summit that was held in Genoa from July 19 to July 21, 2001.-Incident:...
. Similar graffiti also appeared in Piacenza
Piacenza
Piacenza is a city and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Piacenza...
, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, and Palermo
Palermo
Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
.
Consequences
Following the riots, the government announced its willingness to harshen the current football stadia act, also known as Pisanu decree (Italian: Decreto Pisanu) after former Minister of the Interior Giuseppe PisanuGiuseppe Pisanu
Giuseppe Pisanu is an Italian politician, longtime member of the Chamber of Deputies for the Christian Democracy and then for Forza Italia...
, who enacted the law in 2005. In its original form, the Pisanu decree required Italian mayors and football clubs to meet specific safety standards in their stadiums; however, these have been ignored by most of Serie A and B clubs, meaning that the majority of Italian football venues, including Catania, did not comply with these standards. Former Minister of the Interior Giuliano Amato
Giuliano Amato
Giuliano Amato is an Italian politician. He was Prime Minister of Italy twice, first from 1992 to 1993 and then from 2000 to 2001. He was more recently Vice President of the Convention on the Future of Europe that drafted the new European Constitution and headed the Amato Group. He is commonly...
officially permitted departures from these standards for the 2006/2007 football season. The events in Catania, however, led Minister Amato, and Minister of Sports Giovanna Melandri
Giovanna Melandri
Giovanna Melandri is an Italian politician.-Education:Giovanna Melandri was born in New York, USA.She earned a diploma "cum laude" in economics and commerce at the Sapienza University of Rome and one of her teachers was Federico Caffè.From 1983 to 1987 she was a coordinator for the work group on...
, to immediately cancel every derogation, thus forcing teams to play "behind closed doors" (forbidding the presence of spectators for every venue not within the law), including Stadio San Siro
San Siro
The Stadio Giuseppe Meazza, originally and commonly referred to as the San Siro because of its location, officially given its current name on 3 March 1980, is a football stadium located in the San Siro district in Milan, Italy. It is the home of both A.C. Milan and F.C. Internazionale Milano...
in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
, Stadio San Paolo
Stadio San Paolo
Stadio San Paolo is a multi-purpose stadium in the western suburb of Fuorigrotta in Naples, Italy, and is the third largest football stadium in Italy after the San Siro and Stadio Olimpico. For the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome, it hosted the football preliminaries. It is currently used mostly for...
in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
and Stadio Artemio Franchi in Florence
Florence
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the province of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with approximately 370,000 inhabitants, expanding to over 1.5 million in the metropolitan area....
. Catania were banned from playing in their stadium
Stadio Angelo Massimino
Stadio Angelo Massimino is a multi-use stadium in Catania, Italy. It is currently used mostly for football matches and the home of Calcio Catania. The stadium was built in 1937 and holds 23,420...
for the remainder of the season, and will have to play the remainder of their home fixtures at a neutral venue. The Catania club was successively punished by the Italian Football Federation with the obligation not to play its home matches in its home stadium, and additionally with no spectators (a porte chiuse). This was however partially overturned on April 4 by the TAR (Tribunale Amministrativo Regionale, regional administrative court) of Catania, which decided the Football Federation should allow spectators to take part on the team's home matches. The decision was overturned by the TAR of Rome some days later, but re-overturned by the Catania TAR in mid-April; this caused the delay of the league match Catania
Calcio Catania
Calcio Catania is an Italian football club founded in 1908 and based in Catania, Sicily. The club has spent much of its history in Serie B, gaining promotion to Italy's top league Serie A five times...
vs Ascoli
Ascoli Calcio 1898
Ascoli Calcio 1898 is an Italian football club based in Ascoli Piceno, Marche. The club was formed in 1898 and currently plays in Italian Serie B, having returned to it after two seasons spent in Serie A...
, originally scheduled to be played on April 22 in Modena
Modena
Modena is a city and comune on the south side of the Po Valley, in the Province of Modena in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy....
with no spectators' presence. The match was rescheduled on May 2. In the end, the FIGC allowed Catania supporters to attend the two final "home" matches against AC Milan
A.C. Milan
Associazione Calcio Milan, commonly referred to as A.C. Milan or simply Milan , is a professional Italian football club based in Milan, Lombardy, that plays in the Serie A. Milan was founded in 1899 by English lace-maker Herbert Kilpin and businessman Alfred Edwards among others...
and Chievo
A.C. ChievoVerona
Associazione Calcio Chievo Verona is a professional Italian football club named after and based in Chievo, a suburb of 2,800 inhabitants in Verona, Veneto, and owned by Paluani, a cake company and the inspiration for their original name, Paluani Chievo...
, both played at Stadio Renato Dall'Ara
Stadio Renato Dall'Ara
Stadio Renato Dall'Ara is a multi-purpose stadium in Bologna, Italy. It is currently used mostly for football matches and the home of Bologna F.C. 1909. The stadium was built in 1927 and holds 38,279...
, Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
.
Other countermeasures provided by the government include a ban on rockets, smoke-producers and firecrackers at sports events, the prohibition of night-matches for the entire month of February 2007, a ban on the block sale of tickets to away supporters, and the so-called "preventive Daspo" (where Daspo stands for "Prohibition to Participate to Sports Events"), which allows the police force to precautionarily ban suspected hooligans from attending football matches. Clubs will also be forbidden to make financial or working relationships with the fan associations. The Amato decree which included all such measures was finally ratified by the Senate on April 4, only five days short of its expiration (in Italy, a governmental decree must be ratified by both the chambers of the Parliament in sixty days).
On February 10, the San Siro in Milan was declared safe enough to host the match of the next day.
On September 2, Stadio Massimino finally reopened its door since the tragic events causing Raciti's death, hosting a Serie A 2007-08
Serie A 2007-08
The 2007-08 Serie A football season was the seventy-sixth since its establishment, and started on August 26, 2007 and ended on May 18, 2008. Internazionale successfully defended the championship on the final day of the season, finishing first with 85 points, three ahead of Roma.-Plusvalenze...
game between Catania and Genoa
Genoa C.F.C.
Genoa Cricket and Football Club, commonly referred to simply as Genoa , is a professional Italian football club based in the city of Genoa, Liguria...
, after the venue underwent major work to fulfil the newly-introduced safety regulations. Raciti's widow Marisa Grasso attended the match, and one minute silence was observed before the starting whistle to honour the inspector's memory.