INSIDE LAZIO’S ULTRAS
“What time are you arriving in Rome?” the WhatsApp message asks FourFourTwo.
“Half past midnight.”
“You can come to our headquarters directly after you arrive in Rome.”
“Yes, but at 1.30am? Or is it better to come on Sunday morning before the game?”
“Sunday, we are very busy – 1.30am.”
“Where should I come to?”
“We’ll let you know later.”
The headquarters belong to the Irriducibili, Lazio and Italy’s biggest ultra group. They are going to be busy tomorrow: Lazio take on arch rivals Roma at the Stadio Olimpico and they have a curva to arrange. Even so, in 30 years of covering football in more than 80 countries, this writer has never been asked to meet anyone at 1.30am before – although the best interviews may have finished at around that time.
Then again, this meeting hasn’t exactly been easy to fix, so if it’s 1.30am, it’s 1.30am. A long day will become a long night.
The ultras don’t really do media. They don’t trust media. They don’t like media. But I’ve spent much of my adult life writing about all facets of fan culture and – love them or loathe them – Italy’s ultras are a key part of that culture, with none as well known as the Irriducibili.
This derby will be especially important for the Irriducibili. Just a few weeks earlier, their 53-year-old leader, Fabrizio ‘Diabolik’ Piscitelli, was assassinated in daylight in a Rome park.
Tributes flooded in from rival ultra groups spread far and wide. On the San Siro’s Curva Nord, Inter fans organised a vast choreography in tribute before their game against Lecce. Inter and Lazio’s ultras enjoy positive relations; so, too, those in Verona. In Barcelona, meanwhile, messages were sprayed around the home of Espanyol’s ground. Back in the Italian capital, Roma’s ultras held up a banner declaring, ‘Alive we fight, dead we respect’. Flowers from Juventus’ ultras are placed on a park bench in south-east Rome, where Piscitelli was killed with a single shot to the head by a man dressed as a jogger. A day after his death, an enormous banner stating, ‘Diablo lives!’ was hung outside Rome’s historic Colosseum.
As an investigation into Piscitelli’s murder was opened by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate, Italy’s deputy prime minister, Matteo Salvini, said, “I’m sure that the professionalism of the law enforcement and investigators will resolve the case. No criminal can hope
