RamZone's reviews of the best round ball reads continues this week with a look at Italian Football and the less than squeaky clean world in which it exists.

A SEASON WITH VERONA
By Tim Parks

Published by Secker & Warburg 2002
(ISBN 0 436 27595 3 hardback)

In his book Tim Parks seeks to answer two questions:

1. Is Italy a united country or a loose affiliation of warring states?

2. Is Italian football a sport or an ill disguised protraction of ancient enmities?

By the end of this book it becomes apparent that the second answer in each question looks the more likely.

After 20 years of living in Italy Tim Parks decides to write a book about a season with his adopted local side, Hellas Verona and vows to attend all games, home and away.

Hellas Verona are coupled alongside Lazio in the minds of the sporting world as having fans accused of racism, vulgarity and violence and as a general election occurs during his year of travels, the worlds of sport and politics become interwoven.

The funniest part is at the beginning. He books to go to an away match in Bari which is about as far as you can get in terms of Serie A stadia from Verona, and his transport is a rickety old overnight coach with a group of people from ‘Zanzibar’, his local bar, who seem completely insane, criminal and totally without any accepted parameters of behaviour.

This sets the scene really because these people who so appal him on that first trip become a major part of his life with whom he identifies more and more.

These are the ‘brigate’ from the ‘curva sud’ in the Bentegodi stadium in Verona. As he identifies more and more with them, their obscene chants become funnier in his eyes although he does stop short of the ‘monkey’ chants at black players for which this group of fanatics receive much disapproval.

He becomes quite obsessed with reading an internet message board devoted to Verona called The Wall and even on his holidays he secretly plugs his laptop in to see what the latest comments are.

Parks even leaves his wife & family on their annual holiday to travel to a ‘play off’ game.

Although he does resort to travelling by air to the more distant games and gets to know the manager, club owner and members of the team, he still identifies with the ‘gialloblu’  and he finds himself at work humming some disgracefully obscene songs, being completely devoid of his ‘fix’ during the winter break and even going down to watch the team train to check they are preparing properly….

This is a book that lifts the lid on the murky world of Italian football – with an insight into inexplicable (but predicted) refereeing decisions, horrible conditions for away fans, alleged match fixing and police brutality.

It also shows the lack of respect that Italians appear to hold for people from outwith their area – the north/south divide is constantly referred to and no insult or obscenity is too bad to shout at opposing fans.

The worst example was singing about an earthquake to Udine fans from an area which had suffered such a disaster.

Tim Parks becomes more and more identified with the ‘brigate’ as the year goes by and more and more obsessed with fear of the success of the local village side Chievo.

His book is dedicated to ‘the boys on the Zanzibar bus’ which gives a clue as to his loyalties.

A funny, sometimes horrifying, often eye opening book and an excellent read for anyone who loves Italy but has never lifted the lid….

Next Week:

Walking on Water

By Brian Clough

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