Di Canio vs. Lucarelli: An Ideological Battle Seen in Salutes

Shortly before the game between Lazio and Livorno in April 2005, Ian Hawkey wrote in The Times that “politics will outshout the sport.” While exaggerations about the wider significance of games are rampant in sports journalism, Hawkey’s assertion was completely accurate. Lazio vs. Livorno was not just a Serie A match. It was to be a clash of ideologies between the two clubs, their fans, and their star players, Paolo Di Canio of Lazio and Cristiano Lucarelli of Livorno.

Paolo DI Canio is nothing if not controversial. In 1998, while playing for Sheffield Wednesday, Di Canio achieved infamy by pushing referee Paul Alcock to the ground after being sent him off. (Incredibly, Di Canio also won the 2001 FIFA Fair Play Award for catching a ball he could have easily put in the net because a player was injured at the time.) But Di Canio’s most controversial moment came in 2005, when Di Canio gave a one-armed Roman salute (most famously used by Italian fascists) to fans of his team, Lazio.

Di Canio make his Roman salute, a gesture he would repeat two more times

But Di Canio’s is not the only salute witnessed on an Italian soccer pitch. Livorno’s striker Cristiano Lucarelli often celebrates his goals with clenched-fist salutes made famous by those associated with Communism.

Lucarelli’s clenched-fist salute

The ideologies of Di Canio and Lucarelli are apparent in their salutes. And the players’ choice to use their prominence to espouse political views shows the strength of their beliefs.

Neither player is ashamed of his views. Di Canio describes himself as right-wing and he tried to quell the controversy over his salute by saying, “I’m a fascist, not a racist” (Jewish groups, among others, did not take kindly to this justification). Lucarelli, on the other hand, is an admitted communist, whose ringtone is the communist anthem The Red Flag. The player’s official website prominently displays Lucarelli’s most famous quote: “Some football players pay a billion for a Ferrari or a Yacht, with that money I bought myself Livorno’s shirt. That’s all.”

It’s tempting to write off Di Canio and Lucarelli as ideological extremists who just happen to be extremely talented soccer players. But they both represent ideologies shared by many fans of their teams. Livorno and Lazio are two of the 42 clubs in Italy’s top three divisions that a study claimed had “significant political orientations.”

The connection between Lazio fans and fascism is long-standing. Mussolini was a fan of the biancocelesti who often went to matches. Though Mussolini is long-dead, support for his fascist ideology lives on in some elements of the Lazio support. Ben Fenton wrote in the Telegraph in 2005 that Di Canio described his Roman salute, as “a salute from a ‘camerata‘ to ‘camerati‘, carefully using the Italian words for members of Mussolini’s fascist movement.” Andrea Mussolini, granddaughter of Il Duce, gushed over Di Canio’s gesture, saying, “What a delightful Roman salute! I was deeply moved. I will write him a thank you note.”

Lazio’s hard-core fans, known as irriducibili, are well-known for bigoted views that would make Mussolini proud. It wasn’t that long ago that the Curva Nord, the stand where the ultras congregate for home matches, displayed a banner “Team of Blacks, Crowd of Jews” to taunt their counterparts at Roma. Non-white players have been relatively rare at Lazio, perhaps scared off by the racist graffiti that welcomed Aron Winter, the first black player at the club in the early 1990s. In 2000, the fans showed their support for Serbian war criminal Arkan.

In stark contrast to the right-wing fans of Lazio, Livorno’s supporters are known to be extremely left-leaning. The Italian Communist Party was founded in Livorno in 1921 and this ideology is expressed by fans of the local soccer team. Ian Hawkey writes that, Livorno are known as a communist club, whose fans don’t just take scarves, replica jerseys and loudhailers to matches, but go with Che Guevara in tow. His face, emblazoned on banners and T-shirts, is the chosen signature not just of a club but of a city as strongly associated with the left as any in Italy.

Che’s image is accompanied by Communist flags and songs in the Armando Picchi Stadium.

Livorno’s fans have not avoided controversy either. Writing in the Scotsman, Kasper Steenbach describes an incident in which the “newly formed left-leaning fan club Brigate Autonome Livornesi (BAL) defined its stance at a Livorno home game when members unfurled a banner depicting a local female member of the post-fascist political party, Alleanza Nazionale - with the Italian flag up her backside.”

Just as Di Canio has explicitly connected himself to Lazio’s most extreme fans, Cristiano Lucarelli expresses admiration for BAL. He wears number 99, in homage to the year the fan club was founded and shares their love of Che. Many believe Lucarelli’s international career has been hampered by an incident in which he celebrated a goal by removing his uniform to display a t-shirt with the iconic image of the Argentine revolutionary. The striker is unperturbed, saying, “I am sure that, if I had been a little more careful expressing my political views, if I had shut up more often, then I would have had fewer problems with getting in the national team. But my national team is Livorno.”

Though they would be loathe to admit it, Di Canio and Lucarelli have many things in common. Both are, first and foremost, passionate fans of their clubs. “[Di Canio] travelled [sic] with the fans to away games even when he was already a distinguished member of Lazio’s youth team back then in mid-eighties.” And Lucarelli, while playing for Torino in 2002, went to see his beloved team play a crucial match.

That game changed his life. When Igor Protti scored the winner, it secured Livorno’s promotion to Serie B for the first time in 30 years. Lucarelli, donning scarf and sunglasses, joined fans who rushed on to the pitch at the final whistle.

Lucarelli would join Livorno soon after, taking a pay cut to do so. Di Canio also sacrificed money for love of club, joining a financially troubled Lazio in order to help his team regain past glories.

The love Di Canio and Lucarelli have for their clubs is reciprocated by their fans. Lazio fans offered to pay Di Canio’s 10,000 euro fine after his Roman salute (a gesture which is illegal in Italy). And Kasper Steenbach writes that in Livorno, the “hero is Lucarelli, a man who put the right to laud Che Guevara above his career with the national team.”

As Barney Ronay pointed out recently in the Guardian, players with strong political views are rare today. Yet in Paolo Di Canio and Cristiano Lucarelli, Italy has two of the most outspoken players. Their views may differ, but both Di Canio and Lucarelli have a need to express their politics on the pitch.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 1st, 2007 at 7:41 pm and is filed under Europe, History, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.