psycho italians

[jonny cockeral]

"All games in Italy have been postponed following a policeman's death at Palermo's Sicilian derby with Catania.

Italy's game with Romania next week has also been postponed by the Italian Football Federation.

The police officer was killed in clashes between both sets of fans outside Stadio Massimino before and after the match.

The dead officer is believed to have been hit in the face by an explosive thrown by some fans.

Italian Federation commissioner Luca Pancalli and sport minister Giovanna Melandri made the decision to call off action over the weekend as a result of the tragedy.

"I have demanded a stop to all activity of football in Italy," Pancalli said in a statement. "Enough is enough.

"It's a situation that I cannot speak of. To lose your life at 38 is incredible. This is not a sport.

"The football tournaments will remain suspended until we solve the violence in our football.

"It's unacceptable that such incidents happen in a country like Italy."

The game itself was marred by crowd trouble with the second half held up for 30 minutes after tear gas was thrown onto the pitch.

Palermo won the game 2-1 with two controversial goals and Catania president Antonio Pulvirenti wants the game replayed and has blamed Palermo fans for the trouble.

"Clearly the incidents were provoked by the Palermo fans when they entered the stadium," said Pulvirenti.

"Before then, nothing had happened, but they started causing trouble and as the images show threw tear gas onto the pitch.

"They were well-organised and came here in order to cause trouble. We feel penalised and will appeal against the result so that the match will be considered void.

"We've been punished for less in the past and demand the same treatment.

"I was on the field and, if you look carefully, the section where the tear gas came from only had Palermo fans in there.

"The officials saw what happened and will take action." "

tut tut, miles behind in stadium safety and everything at least we can control our psychotic fans

[weedguru_animal]

we had our own very similar hooligan problems in this country not so long ago Cameron. With the amount of money in and around the British game, the clubs can, more recently ,afford to pay for decent security. In Sicilly, and in the case in question we are talking about sicilians NOT italians, same region, different blood, there is a different system. As is the case in some areas of Italy, Sicily is not controlled/run exclusively by the government. Families are the bosses. Not everywhere, but undoubtedly in some places.

Yes I agree that the italian FA are miles behind us. But their job is harder because not only are their non governmental organizations who effectively control certain areas, the government itself is also horrendously corrupt.

I think they have done the right thing in suspending ALL football this weekend. Time for reflection and some discussion between the richest and poorest teams to hopefully produce a few new laws which can be implemented that will prevent this kind of bullshit happening again.

The Brits have done brilliantly over these last 20 years to eradicate the racism and hooliganism which were prevalant in our game for many years before.

The Spaniards whilst not so violent are disgustingly racist but when their national team manager is also a racist there can be no surprise that racist behaviour not only goes unpunished but is actually an accepted part of the spanish game itself. Not a great place to be black, that is for sure.

A horrible weekend in sicily but we can hardly take the moral high ground as Brits on this matter.

[Ziggy]

Ye you crazy Italians, Brits and Irish. You and your soccer games.

[sickkid90]

ya italians are crazy when it comes to soccer (being one of them) and they (as you can see) will kill over them