Posted on 02/02/2007 8:32:44 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Police officer killed in riots; all Serie A and B matches suspended
Maria Sanminiatelli
Canadian Press
Friday, February 02, 2007
In this frame made from SKYTG24, fans clash with police outside Catania's Angelo Massimino stadium after the Italian first division soccer league match between Palermo and Catania, in Sicily, southern Italy, Friday. (AP/SkyTG24)
ROME (AP) - A police officer was killed Friday when fans rioted at a Serie A game between Sicilian sides Catania and Palermo, prompting the Italian soccer federation (FIGC) to postpone all league matches this weekend and cancel next week's friendlies involving the national teams.
Fans rioted outside Catania's Angelo Massimino stadium during the second half. Police fired tear gas, which wafted into the stadium and forced the match to be temporarily suspended in the 58th minute with Palermo leading 1-0. Television footage from Sky TG24 News showed players struggling to breathe and pouring bottled water on their faces.
Police said the officer died after an explosive device was thrown inside his vehicle.
The violence continued after the game, in which Palermo beat Catania 2-1, trapping hundreds of fans inside the stadium as authorities sought to avoid further violence and stop people from leaving.
The ANSA news agency reported that nine Catania fans had been detained, but none was suspected of killing the officer. Police in Catania could not confirm the report early Saturday as all top officials were in a meeting or out of their offices.
FIGC commissioner Luca Pancalli called an emergency meeting in Rome late Friday, and announced that he was cancelling all games, the federation said.
"The decision to block the championships was immediate," Pancalli told a news conference after the meeting. "We cannot continue like this. What we're witnessing has nothing to do with soccer, therefore Italian soccer is stopping."
Italy's premier, president and other top officials quickly condemned the violence.
"I feel it is my duty to say that we unfortunately need a loud and clear signal to avoid the degeneration of the sport that we, unfortunately and dramatically, are witnessing," Prime Minister Romano Prodi was quoted as saying by Italian news agencies.
Prodi and President Giorgio Napolitano also said that their thoughts were with the family of the officer, who was identified as Chief Inspector Filippo Raciti.
Napolitano released a statement urging authorities to take a firm stand "against degenerations that demean the values of the sport and offend the country's civic conscience."
Pancalli added that the decision to postpone the weekend's remaining games was not enough, and said there would be more meetings Monday "to identify those drastic measures that will allow us to restart. Otherwise, we're not restarting the games."
The FIGC also cancelled Wednesday's friendly between Italy and Romania and an under-21 friendly scheduled for Tuesday against Belgium.
The federation said that another police officer was in critical condition, and police said dozens of people with lesser injuries had been taken to local hospitals.
Police defended security measures at the game.
"We're talking about incidents that happened outside the stadium and after the game had already started," police Cmdr. Piero Gambuzza told Sky TG24 News. "Police did not allow anyone with explosives to enter the stadium."
The violence follows last month's death of a fourth-division team manager from injuries he received when he tried to stop a brawl during a game.
I suspect this is one of the big reasons why soccer has never caught on in this country. It's got too much of a reputation as a sport for Third World sh!t-holes.
yea, there were 10,000,000 soccer games in the world yesterday and almost 35% of them ended in a riot.
yea, there were no recent riots at other sports events except for http://www.themilwaukeechannel.com/education/10883525/detail.html
or this one (not a riot) http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/opinion/article2187739.ece but I think I'm making my point.
Police said the officer died after an explosive device was thrown inside his vehicle.Checklist before heading to a soccer match:
Xenophobe!
There are 4 channels of soccer on TV 24 hours a day in this country and more kids playing it than any other sport.
It's not a "third world sh*thole" sport, it's played EVERYWHERE, including the USA. It's the world's most popular sport, unlike the pathetic NFL that has a tiny domestic competition between, what is it? - thirty teams, and then declares the winners "World Champions"
Word Champions of the NFL? Just what does that "N" stand for?
Moron!
There are thousands of professional soccer matches world wide every week, 52 weeks a year, and every now and then ther is trouble at one.
Your comment is akin to saying "seems like every one who owns a gun is a murderer".
No, riots in and around soccer stadium are not uncommon. I won't get into dissing contest between American Football fans and Soccer fans. I like both.
Getting rowdy in soccer matches has long root in Europe. Clashes between rival groups of fans are common spectacles.
Only in U.S., soccer is regarded as clean and nice sport.
Lots of pics Here
And yet these games can't draw enough support from television sponsors to put them on network television. Why is that?
I'll tell you why . . . It's because the same parents in this country who insist on having their kids play soccer wouldn't even dream of sitting down for 2-3 hours on a weekend to watch adults play the same game. Soccer is the most popular sport among kids these days because it's an inexpensive sport to play, not because so many people actually like it.
It's the world's most popular sport, unlike the pathetic NFL that has a tiny domestic competition between, what is it? - thirty teams, and then declares the winners "World Champions"
You won't get an argument from me on this one. I lost interest in the NFL a long time ago -- not because it is "a tiny domestic competition," but because it is the most overrated sport I've ever seen.
When it comes to sports, there's nothing better than hockey . . .
Maybe they can cool it off, if the game were played on ice, using a puck instead of a soccer ball.
You forgot the gas mask.
Trouble at soccer matches being "not uncommon" is a factor of the number of games there are 114 countries with National leagues, many with multiple divisions, so you can figure on there being 1500-2000 professional clubs worldwide - and they each play on average 40 - 50 games a year.
That's around 40- 50,000 Professional Club games each year, not counting the The World Cup, Regional championships, or the millions of amateur games (Figure 20 - 30 times the number of professional games).
Now out of 50,000 plus games, how many have seen reports of crowd trouble, and how does that compare percentage wise with the NFL's total of 267 gmes in a season?
Unlike NFL Football, that takes three to four hours to run out a one hour clock , and which only has about 15 minutes of actual time with the ball in motion, a soccer match is completed in two hours- two 45 minutes halves of continuous play plus a 15 minutes half time.
It's not on network TV often because it's not part of the American cultural fabric -yet, but it's making inroads, and to decry it as a "third world sport" is just ridiculous.
Hockey is a great game, and in many ways similar to soccer.
From a "spectator sport" standpoint, the problem with soccer is that it is far more exciting to watch kids play it than to watch adults play it. For all the talk about soccer being a sport of constant motion, the game can be incredibly dull -- and extremely predictable -- at its highest levels. And all the candy-@ssed flopping around on the ground whenever incidental contact occurs between players reinforces America's aversion to it.
You've obviously not seen some of the excellent club football that goes on around the world. The World Cup is, certainly somewhat sterile, but watch Chelsea, Arsenal or Manchester United play and it is often breathtaking, and there is plenty of passion.
Nearly all American sports are passionless, they are marketed as family social occasions, they stop every ten seconds for time outs and advertising, and the game even stops if the crowd is too noisy!
Soccer matches don't neeed cheeleaders, organs or "applause" signs to tell the crowd when to sing. They sing a whole repertoire of songs in raucous unison - watch Galatasaray play in Istambul- the crowd sings non-stop.
These soccer riots really lend credence to the world media that claims that Americans are the worst behaved, least civilized, and most fanatical sports fans in the world.
you have a point, but that was 22 years ago. There have been 2,558,235 televised Soccer games since, none as fatal as that one.
What is funny is the number of FReepers who allegedly hate soccer yet scan the keywords everyday for "soccer" so they can come running to the soccer threads! It was absolutely hilarious during the last World Cup where soccer-bashers were calling famous players like David Beckham "homosexual" and similar childish schoolyard nonsense. It is a great game that will survive for thousands of years due to its beautiful simplicity.
~ Blue Jays ~
Well said. The FReepers who harass soccer threads do it because they want someone to harass. They know that if they picked a sport such as football or baseball and used the same tactics that they would probably be banned or suspended after doing it over and over again in 20 threads.
I agree with you that soccer is beautiful in its simplicity. That is something that annoyed me in the last World Cup. There were about 20 times the number of stoppages called than were needed. Ideally, a soccer game should have 45 minutes without a stoppage. But even 2 minutes would have been asking too much during the last World Cup.
But yes, soccer (or real football) will last for thousands of years because it has almost reached perfection in the same way that chess has almost reached perfection.
Ah yes, the singing.
Here in Scotland you can hear lovely songs at the football, like when the Rangers fans do that great line about "WE'RE UP OUR KNEES IN FENIAN BLOOD!" when they play a Catholic team.
No sport is free from discontent when large crowds are gathered; but Soccer has time and time again proven to be the leader in frequent, riotously brutal fan behavior.
The big game of the day just ended in a 4-1 win by Ajax over Feyenoord. For anybody to think that the superbowl is anything but a marketing ploy to get people to watch 3 hours of commercials interrupted by supposedly 1 hour of 'game' is ludricous.
The NFL is nothing but light-loaferness. All players line up sticking their behinds in the air ready to receive... The Quarterback reaching between the legs of the center, touching who knows what... Tight pants that even ballet dancers would frown upon...
It's a good thing the NFL season is so short with so few games, that there are loads of time outs and interruptions for the pantsy NFL players to get a breather. For the average NFL fan's attention span is shorter than a cocker spaniel's.
Flame on ;o)
Yeah and David Beckham really oozes masculinity. Let's be practical. Who would you rather be tackled by? ..Lawrence Taylor or Ruud Guulit. Think what you want. Soccer may be popular. Not on this country.
Beckham is (an overrated) midfielder. Gullit was an offensive midfielder. If you want to compare defenders to defenders, Mr. Taylor wouldn't last a minute against the likes of Jaap Stam or Fabio Cannavaro. Real football players don't have to run to the sidelines to suck on an oxygen tank, like a bunch of sissies.
You do that!
Enjoy the manly shoulder pads, spandex pants, and face make up as they spend more times with their butts in the air as "wide receivers" or "tight ends" than they do actually prancing around on the field.
And don't forget to admire the dinky little monogrammed towelettes they have tucked into their waist bands for use in case their fingernails get dirty.
And while you are watching today, here's a little exercise for you (it will give something to do). Take a stop watch and start it every time the the ball goes in motion and stop it every time the play (not the clock) ends - at the end of four hours you will have 12 - 15 minutes of accumulated play action.
15 minutes in four hours! Now that's real athleticism!
- If it's manliness you want in sport - go watch Rugby League, no pansy plastic armor there, if it's skill, speed, balance and athleticism - watch soccer.
All dying civilizations have their "games" accompanied with riots. Sports being one of the few things people in dying civilizations care about.
You are correct, soccer is a game, as is NFL football.
Mountain climbing, parachuting, motor racing and bull fighting are sports. In a true sport there are real consequences for failure, that was the original use of the term.
Sport was pitting your skill against an adversary that could kill you such as in hunting wild animals with minimal weapons, jousting, swordplay etc.
My hubby is in the living room watching Man United right now, with the lovely language he's directing at the TV I've taken refuge here at FR (he's a Brit).
I was being sarcastic
I'm not! ;0)
Because American make ridiculous arguments about the world's most popular game. They claim there is some political element to it - there's not - it, not a socialist sport, everyone plays it, it's just a game. They claim it's played by pansies and "metrosexuals" - that's ridiculous since, for the most part, they actually know nothing about that that they speak of. They claim it's "boring", clearly it isn't or it wouldn't be so popular, their boredom only highlights their ignorance.
Then they go on to laud a game that almost no other country plays, is so complicated that the rules are constantly being amended and are largely indecipherable, an that has all the qualities of Socialism. It employs a vast squad of players, the majority of which stand around for most of the time, while 11 of them take 3 hours to do a one hour task.
At the end of the year they redistribute resouces in the draft to make everything "fair" for next year, unlike soccer where you are promoted or demoted on merit and rewarded for performance.
So when Americans toot their horn about this great American sport, we soccer fans find it highly amusing.
That's why..
You rwote - "I think I'll watch the "pathetic NFL's" Super Bowl today and watch a man's game instead of watching a bunch of metrosexual Euro weenies sashaying across the soccer field, constantly putting their long flowing hair behind their ears like a bunch of girls"
You mean the so called contact game wear the participants wear tights and padding?
For sucha girlie man, he sure seems to shag a lot of hot women ...
In my humble opinion, the best soccer league in the world is the English Premier League, especially since the Taylor Report in 1990 helped spur major reforms that have made soccer stadiums in England far more modern and also have dramatically reduced the hooliganism problem that plagued England during the 1970's and 1980's. Why do you think the only national professional soccer league that have a true worldwide audience is the EPL? (Anyone who's familiar with soccer knows of Manchester United, FC Liverpool, Aston Villa, Arsenal, and Chelsea teams.)
You are right, except I wouldn't include Aston Villa in that list....
you must be a Villa fan..:-)
They should be rioting over the Muzzies taking over their Countries, not some sill ass game.
It's kind of hard to ignore Aston Villa when almost every "footie" site on the Internet prominently mentions them. :)
Yup, definitely a Villa fan if you notice such a nondescript do-nothing, mid-table team as them amongst the other august company....:-)
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