Going for Broke
by Luciano D'Orazio
To the precious few Americans who follow European soccer, the Italian first division (Serie A) standings have seen more than their share of surprises. The big three — AC Milan, Internazionale of Milan and Juventus of Turin — who collectively won 55 championships in the past century, are all in the hunt. Bologna, a power of old struggling to return to title glory, also factors into the chase. So too does Chievo Verona, last season’s little wonder that rose from the second to first division and finished a respectable sixth place, qualifying for the UEFA Cup tournament. All these teams are within six points, or two wins, of each other. It is the most competitive championship race in many years.
What is most surprising, though, is the team sitting second overall, one point behind AC Milan as of this writing. That team is S.S. Lazio, and just by being in the hunt for the title it is performing nothing short of a minor miracle. Any one of its problems alone could sink a franchise, but the team suffers a long list of ills: extravagant spending, crippling debt and an image as one of Europe’s most racist, xenophobic clubs.
Lazio, like so many of its Serie A rivals, engaged in a massive spending spree in the early to mid-1990s, hiring international players in a desperate attempt to end its 26-year championship drought (which it achieved in 2000). Following the lead of Silvio Berlusconi, president of AC Milan and future Italian prime minister, Italy's clubs emptied their coffers for high-priced talent, sometimes to such an extent that, as in Milan’s case, almost the entire team was made up of non-Italians. It was these spending sprees that made Serie A the glamour league of the decade, and Lazio boasted a constellation of stars: Giuseppe Signori, Alessandro Nesta, Juan Francisco Veron, Diego Simeone, Sinisa Mijhalovic, Alen Boksic and Hernan Crespo, among others.
However, the freewheeling player market ruined the league financially. Only one team in Serie A, Juventus, has shown a profit since 2000. Some have had to cut payroll; others have had to cut pay rates and hold back on blockbuster international transfers. Lazio, in a last-minute attempt to balance its accounts, sold large portions of its roster for bargain prices. What fans see on the field today is merely a rump remnant of the stockpile of talent that once graced Olympic Stadium, their home pitch.
But even that did not settle the issue. In 2000, in an effort to obtain more capital, Lazio joined Juventus and Milan in an initial public offering on the Milan stock exchange. Share prices sank; they now trade at only about 0.737 euros ($0.76) a share. And without any capital, the roster has not been paid since June, nor have many of the transferred players been paid for — a lawsuit was recently served by English club Manchester United for 12 million pounds that Lazio owed when it bought Dutch defender Jaap Stam.
Coupled with Lazio’s financial situation is its severe image problem. Put frankly, the team is considered the most racist, xenophobic club on the continent. Far-right extremists became fans after the discovery that Lazio was Benito Mussolini's favorite team. An extreme neo-fascist party, the National Alliance (once led by the granddaughter of Mussolini) owns 30 to 35 percent of the team. The team’s fan base is generally drawn from Rome’s more affluent (and more conservative) outskirts, and the Ultras, sometimes also known as the Irriducibili (Unshakeables), form the most rabid and violent of the lot. Hyper-violent rabid Lazio fans akin to England’s hooligans, the Ultras claim their cross-town rivals AS Roma is, as one Ultra put it, a "team full of blacks, stands full of Jews." (Roma traditionally draws from Rome’s working class, immigrant and minority communities.) The club itself is reluctant to sign nonwhite players for fear of backlash from the Ultras, who have been known to provoke violence outside the stadium after matches.
Stadium behavior bears this out. The Ultras’ chants take a militant, dangerous tone: The letters of the team are sounded out to Nazi salutes. They carry banners with fasces and swastikas. Some are white supremacist flags, some are anti-Semitic or racist slogans, while some are banners praising war criminals like the slain Serb terrorist Arkan. Every time a black player touches the ball, jeers, racist taunts, monkey noises and worse descend from the Curva Nord, or Northern Curve, the traditional area in Olympic Stadium where the Ultras sit. In a stadium with a large police presence, not a single patrolman can be found: Stadium management and the police have ceded control of the Curva Nord to the Ultras. Although the club is working to shed this racist image, old habits die hard — the Ultras occasionally wave Palestinian flags, though obviously more as an expression of anti-Semitism than pro-Arab sentiment.
Of course, none of Lazio’s predicament is unique. Other clubs in Europe are experiencing massive financial crunches as the after effects of the free-spending '90s. They also are contending with their own problems of racism, a by-product of the increasing heterogeneity of both European teams and European society. Nor is it unique that a club would suffer both problems simultaneously.
What is unique is that the club's players, so far, are willing to put up with an uncertain paycheck and a bruised image to field an amazingly good product on the field. To stay competitive, let alone sit at second place in the standings this season is no small feat, with three established powers at its heels as well as young, hungry teams willing to inch up the ladder. Yet it does, and it is directly attributed to the attitudes of the players who courageously put their off-field issues aside and enjoy a 13-match unbeaten streak with an undefeated record on the road. The club has stood toe-to-toe with rivals Roma and Inter, and just recently thrashed the defending champions Juventus.
However, this may soon change. Grumblings are afoot in Rome that the players would like the salary issue resolved by the end of the year. The players may well bring that grumbling onto the field, thereby quickly sinking the team into a mediocrity more fitting of an overpriced, indebted team with an image problem. It is hoped, for the sake of the fans, that this does not come to pass. Lazio today stands as a blueprint for many of the problems that plague the European game, such as racism, violence and financial instability. But it also stands, as recent events have shown, for often-maligned notions of selflessness, loyalty and, above all, a good game.
E-mail Luciano D'Orazio at loudogs1@aol.com.
