Red Sox/Yankees are a bunch of pansies

[GeorgeWendtCFI]

Inter-Milan match ends in chaos
Angry fans throw flares onto pitch; Chelsea advances
Posted: Tuesday April 12, 2005 4:44PM; Updated: Tuesday April 12, 2005 5:52PM

MILAN, Italy (Reuters) -- The Champions League quarterfinal between Inter Milan and city rivals AC Milan was abandoned after 73 minutes on Tuesday after Milan keeper Dida was struck by one of dozens of flares thrown down from the stands.

German referee Markus Merk took the players off the pitch at the San Siro stadium after Inter fans began hurling plastic bottles and then over 30 flares on to the penalty area below them after a header by Esteban Cambiasso was disallowed.

Dida received medical treatment to his shoulder while Inter players urged their fans to stop hurling objects on to the pitch.

The goal frame disappeared in clouds of smoke as flares continued to be rained down and burn on the pitch.

The players came back on to the field after 25 minutes but Merk took them off again after just 30 seconds play and abandoned the game when more flares came raining down with no sign of intervention from the police.

Milan was leading 1-0 thanks to a first-half goal from Andriy Shevchenko, which had put it 3-0 up on aggregate after it won last week's first-leg 2-0 at the San Siro stadium the two clubs share.

UEFA's website reported that "referee Merk will now submit his report to the UEFA Control and Disciplinary Body, who will deal with the case."

[Bones42]

with no sign of intervention from the police. Can't say I'd blame them.

What will be next for their stadiums? Plexiglass walls all around?

[FFTrainer]

Originally posted by Bones42
What will be next for their stadiums? Plexiglass walls all around? [/B]

Yup pretty much. My guess is soon they will be forced to look like that bubble hockey game that used to be in bars and arcades

[GeorgeWendtCFI]

Originally posted by FFTrainer


Yup pretty much. My guess is soon they will be forced to look like that bubble hockey game that used to be in bars and arcades

Still is one at Mennen Arena.

[GeorgeWendtCFI]

Italy to crack down on football violence as game is called off
By Peter Popham in Rome
13 April 2005


Silvio Berlusconi, whose government suffered a humiliating defeat in recent regional elections, has authorised a high-profile crackdown on violence at Italian football matches, which could lead to the closure of many stadiums.

The move came as the recent flurry of football clashes culminated last night in the abandonment of AC Milan's semi-final against Inter Milan amid scenes of violence.

The game was halted after Inter Milan's supporters threw flares and bottles into the penalty area. A flare hit the AC Milan goalkeeper, Dida, on the shoulder.

The incident came after a torrid weekend of clashes in which 85 police officers were injured. The main trouble was during a match between the Roman side Lazio and Livorno at the Stadio Olimpico in Rome.

Yesterday's closure threat was made by Mr Berlusconi's Interior Minister, Giuseppe Pisanu, on the eve of Liverpool's Champions' League quarter-final second-leg match against Juventus of Turin tonight. The game comes 20 years after the disaster at the Heysel stadium in Belgium, when violence by Liverpool fans led to the deaths of 39 Juventus supporters. Liverpool supporters have been warned not to wear scarves or other signs of affiliation in Turin.

Italian politicians are increasingly concerned that top football matches in the country are becoming a vehicle for extremist politics. Lazio is notorious for its identification with the right and its nostalgia for Fascism. The Livorno club is equally well known for the Communist sympathies of its supporters. In January, the Lazio striker Paolo Di Canio was fined after celebrating scoring with a Fascist salute to fans.

Political displays in football grounds are banned in Italy, but the ban is universally ignored. And on Sunday all the paraphernalia of both right and left was on display: hammer-and-sickle and Nazi flags, and portraits of Mussolini. The home side's fans unfurled a banner reading "Rome is Fascist".

After the game, which Lazio won 3-1, fans clashed violently at Rome's San Pietro railway station, damaging the building and terrifying the public. Two fans on each side were injured as well as two policemen.

Mr Pisanu said: "If circumstances force me to choose between the safety of the police and the presence of the public at football matches, I will not hesitate for an instant to close the stadiums most at risk."

In Italy football fans' campanilismo, or total identification with one's home side, right or wrong, is overlaid by the political partisanship which renders many areas of Italian life battlegrounds in the low-level civil war that has been in progress since 1945.