Away games banned: fans are held hostage by CASMS

In the complete silence of the Italian football movement, we are witnessing something unique in Europe. Grotesque and paradoxical when we really have to find qualifying adjectives. In fact, today in the minor leagues, especially in the Lega Pro, we attend at least one game every week without fans. A fact that concerns more than anything else Group C, the southern one, so to speak, known for the “warmth” of many of its historic courses where we have already been 15 games without away fans in 14 days; but a trend that is also common in the other tournaments of the third professional championship and the other series (A, B, D, also Eccellenza).

The truth is that Italian football is still a hostage today CASMS (Sporting Event Safety Analysis Committee), ofobservatory about sporting events and the Ministry of the Interior.

Not to mention the prefects, who tend to restrict the decisions of higher bodies even further. Above all, the fans are being held hostage, as they are confronted with increasingly strict bans every day that prevent them from following their team away. Easier to ban than to improve, easier to block than to manage. He will always remain the lounge fan who has to subscribe to pay TV and can only fill the glove compartment with Sunday pastries.

There are too many bans, too much resentment from police commissioners who impose indiscriminate punishments for incidents involving violent people. And now we have lost track of the most absurd of these bans, often onethe limits of common sense and credibility. This is the case in matches between teams with partner corners, where the relevant authorities have restricted or even banned the participation of visiting fans. The author does this, for example, from Avellino, where the green and white fans, on the occasion of the derby against Casertana, saw that the WHO guaranteed only 500 tickets because it was a “game in danger”.

And even though the two groups of fans were lifelong friends, so much so that they celebrated their bond even before kick-off – in the end, with a total of 800 tickets, common sense prevailed: better than nothing. Not to mention the ban on entry of fans (last year) for the game against Giugliano, which was played, among other places, at the Partenio (Avellino Stadium) due to the unavailability of Giugliano’s home stadium. Comedians, but no endingsUnfortunately.

However, we are talking about a general trend that has affected almost all markets at least once and others continuously. It was exactly like this in these hours, for example the Sampdoria curve to expose itself with a statement on the subject and denounce the “complete incompetence” and “arrogance” of CASMS and Osservatorio with regard to Friday’s game against Spezia. Why create it when you can ban it, as we also wrote a few months ago?

Last year we saw a dramatic increase in bans, card requirements and restrictions Away games banned in Serie A (for some fans even for two months, the fall of Rome and Naples) through series B, C, D to excellence and the Italian Cup – A few months ago, after another ban on away fans, in this case Potenza, it was the home team Juventus Stabia to express “its regret at these repeated and ongoing travel bans affecting fans». What can I say, it will be the aftermath of lockdowns and travel bans, where everything worked perfectly for our hard-working public policy managers.

There is tired rhetoric in all of thisImportance of fans and perhaps in empty stadiums, regularly repeated by the presidents of Serie A, Serie B or Lega Pro.

The first to remain silent in the face of similar repressive initiatives, which has now become a habit and is done in the simplest of ways do not have to prevent and manage public order. What is happening, among other things, all over Europe, so much so that even UEFA has made it clear on several occasions: If you are unable to ensure public order, you cannot organize sporting events.

And so we also ask ourselves: as Italy will dohave now completely settled for the comfortable ban guidelines, so much so that they are being implemented in domestic football every week on time to cope with the influx of thousands of fans from across the continent for the local Europeans? How can we control them if we can’t get a few hundred fans to the away stadium every weekend? We look forward to seeing if anyone wants to respond to us.