Andrea Ratti
[Ed. note— The following piece, written by Signal Tribune intern Andrea Ratti, was only lightly edited in an effort to preserve his “voice” and writing style, as he makes his transition into learning English. Ratti is a native of Piacenza, Italy.]
One of the main differences I see between U.S. and Italy is the fans’ attitudes during a professional game. Football is the most important sport in the U.S., with some of the noisiest fans in the world. The atmosphere during a football match is amazing, with cheerleaders supporting each team, mascots that involve the crowd, and food and beer— a lot of beer. The entertainment is the most important thing for the organizers. People need to have fun watching the game and enjoy the breaks during it drinking a beer while they’re looking at the cheerleaders’ dances or mascot’s tricks.
In Italy, during a soccer game, which is our major sport, people don’t drink any kind of alcohol inside the stadium. It’s prohibited, but the toughest fans get drunk before the beginning of the game, so they can make a lot of noise once they’re inside it. Unfortunately, a lot of times these supporters misunderstand the main goal, which would be to encourage their teams, so they fight against the police and versus the other team’s supporters, before and after the soccer match, using bars, knives and broken bottles.
As an Italian, it’s a shame to admit this reality, but it’s the truth. Here in the U.S., acts of vandalism may only happen after big sport events like NBA Finals, World Series Finals and Super Bowls. I never heard about episodes of violence here like in Italy, and this is surprising for me, because the Italians are only 60 million compared to 300 million Americans across the U.S. In my country, a part of the soccer crowd forgets that they’re at the stadium only for one reason: have fun. In the U.S., instead, fans have a clear idea about the most important goal: to enjoy themselves. Even if they get drunk in the arena, and they’re not able to fight against each other, at least they can have a discussion.
Fortunately there’s a positive aspect in common between U.S. and Italy; soccer is becoming popular here too, especially in the big cities, like New York or Los Angeles. As an Italian, I was surprised to see that LA Galaxy is the most famous team here, and I met two European guys that played in the youth teams in Italy for a very famous club, A.C. Milan, and now they’re playing in LA Galaxy’s youth teams. They told me that LA Galaxy are very organized and professional like the Italian team. They give a lot of importance not only to the training aspect, but to the psychological one, too. The players have to work hard on the team’s schemes, but definitely they have to feel relaxed and enjoy the practice, otherwise they would be overstressed, feeling too much pressure for the official match versus another team. In this way, the gap between European soccer teams and U.S. teams is less than in the past.
This is another example of how entertainment is so importantly combined to the sport here, because there’s no fun without fatigue, and there is no fatigue if you can’t have fun. So Italian soccer fans should realize that an official soccer game is only a way to enjoy themselves and not a good reason to show your daily life frustrations. If they have troubles with their nervous system, they could save their money for a good psychologist, instead of fighting against each other and getting in trouble with the law for a sport competition.
