Napoli Fans Banned From Away Games For The Season

Suffice it to say, the opening week of the Serie A season hasn’t gone so well for Napoli fans. Yes, their team fought hard for their draw with Roma in the derby, but because of a group of, quite frankly, idiots, that’s the last away game they’ll be able to attend all year long. One out of thirty-eight? Not cool.

After taking a train hostage in Rome before the game, Interior Minister Roberto Maroni has stated today that tomorrow he’ll sign a measure banning Napoli fans from attending any away games this season. Worse yet, Napoli may be forced to play some “high risk” games behind closed doors.

The incident with the train caused a huge amount of damage, but perhaps the most miserable aspect is that four workers were hurt:

A group of several hundred Napoli supporters launched firecrackers, broke windows, slashed seats open and committed 500,000 euros (C$770,000) worth of damages to a train carrying them to Rome on Sunday.

At least four railway workers were injured and more violence erupted when the train reached the capital for the AS Roma-Napoli game, which ended 1-1.

There were a number of bans last year for occasions like this involving traveling fans, this isn’t a new thing in Italy, sadly, but it obviously wasn’t enough and the government has done the right thing by laying the hammer down after the very first incident. This stuff, regardless of what club the fans represent, is stupid, asinine and childish, and really has no place in the world of sport. Will these sanctions end the violence? Highly doubtful, but steps like this are what’s needed to curb it slowly and get calcio to a civilized state. The only real unfortunate part is the good among the Napoli tifosi, of which there are many, will be the ones to truly suffer.

La Gazzetta has a gallery of pictures documenting the damage they did.

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Category: World Football