The (Not-so) "Beautiful Game" Turns Ugly

In this country, fans get rowdy/drunk/loud at football games, even make ridiculous, name-changing bets. But we never, even on our worst day in a football stadium KILL COPS outside the stadium by throwing explosive devices into their patrol vehicles, leading to the cancellation of a tournament by the national government and banning fans from most stadiums for future games until a more secure situation can be ensured, as occurred in Italy over the past few days.

And even if such a thing did happen, there would be serious repercussions and the response from the league would probably be a little more substantial than this, from Antonio Matarrese, preisdent of the Italian soccer league:
"This is among Italy's most important industries, and it needs to continue. We are saddened, but the show must go on...Unfortunately, deaths ... are part of this huge movement, which law enforcement officials still can't control."

Good thing he's got perspective; sport is definitely far more important than public safety. I think Mark Kreidler at ESPN.com has it right: "No crowds? No way in the world. Just cancel the whole deal and be done with it."

Mind you, this all comes on the heels of a major match-fixing scandal that sullied the name of Italian soccer, particularly it's most popular franchises, last year.


All of this puts a big fat scar on that already ugly World Cup trophy the Italians won last summer, which, today, seems like ages ago. And for fans of USA Soccer, it's probably better to put that '06 Cup as far behind you as possible anyway. Put it way back there with the 1998 World Cup [in which we lost to, along with every other team we played, Iran, I-freaking-ran]. Let's hope we don't see a repeat of that in.....nope, not going there, we're gonna end this post "friendly".