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Football Comes To Standstill In Italy
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 Coolness: 145220 | PALERMO, Italy -- Italian football has come to a standstill after the killing of a policeman during clashes at a Serie A local derby between Catania and Palermo on Friday evening.
The country's international and domestic football matches have been suspended indefinitely after 38-year-old Filippo Raciti died shortly after a rioter tossed an explosive into his car, outside the ground. The death was the second in little over a week connected to an Italian football game. About 100 people were wounded --officers and fans -- in clashes led by hooded rioters who hurled fireworks and lashed out at police with makeshift weapons. Police said they arrested nine people and had detained 23 others. The latest bloodshed stunned a nation that just last summer triumphantly celebrated their World Cup victory in Germany, and the government called a high-level crisis meeting for Monday to hammer out emergency measures to halt the violence. "We must send a clear message that we must stop the kind of degeneration of sport that unfortunately happens so often," said Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. "We cannot continuously put the lives of police officers at risk and need a remedy that makes football clubs feel responsible (for fans' actions) and radically changes the situation," Prodi added. The Italian football federation (FIGC) quickly declared that all the weekend's matches were suspended, then clarified that the suspension was indefinite and that it also applied to the national team. Italy had been scheduled to host Romania in a friendly on Wednesday. The world champions are due to entertain Scotland in a Euro 2008 qualifier on March 28. They are third in Group B two points behind the Scots and France. "We can't continue to go on like this," said FIGC's extraordinary commissioner Luca Pancalli. "Italian football will stop -- and it will stop until we identify a road, serious and drastic, to allow the possibility of resuming the championships." Pancalli said the emergency meeting on Monday, with the interior and sports ministers, must identify new measures, "otherwise we won't start again". Earlier this week, he had threatened to halt the country's championships after violence last weekend also left one man dead. An official of amateur league club Sammartinese died after being caught up in a fight at the end of a game. A minute's silence was due to be held at games this weekend. The prospect of a speedy return to the stadiums for fans and players was ruled out by the country's Interior Minister Giuliano Amato. "In these conditions, I will no longer send my police into the football stadiums," he was quoted as saying in La Gazzetta dello Sport on Saturday. Without the police, who are paid a poor overtime rate to keep rival supporters apart, many Italian matches would disintegrate into rowdy brawls. Other politicians and sporting figures also expressed their shock at Friday's events, which also left over 150 people injured. Italian Sports and Youth Minister Giovanna Melandri said violence was "a cancer to exterminate. "We must imitate the English example (in dealing with violence)." The president of the Italian Footballers' Association, Sergio Campana called for the leagues to be halted for at least a year. His suggestion -- though unlikely to be followed -- would at least give Italian clubs the chance to modernize their old-fashioned stadiums to bring them into line with those in other top European leagues. Friday's match, which Palermo won 2-1, was suspended for over half-an-hour after smoke -- partly from tear gas launched outside the stadium -- made play impossible. But the most violent clashes came after the match. Hundreds of angry rioters fought for hours, as streams of fans fled down city streets to safety. The latest victim, policeman Raciti, who leaves behind a wife and two children, was in a "desperate situation" after a protester hurled an explosive at him inside his car, his doctor said. Raciti's heart stopped within a few minutes of his arrival at the hospital. The Mayor of Catania, Umberto Scapagnini, was in the operating room during the 45 minutes of fruitless efforts to revive him. "There just are no words to say -- to see a life cut down like this there are just no words," Scapagnini said. "This is absurd and absolutely unacceptable." Magistrates said they opened an investigation into the killing. Palermo coach Francesco Guidolin summed up the mood. "I am very disillusioned," he told Gazzetta dello Sport's Web site. "What has happened tonight offends sport and a beautiful and civil city like Catania. It cannot go on like this. If we do not recapture certain values, it cannot go on." |
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Football Comes To Standstill In Italy
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