ITALIAN IMPRESSIONS : Cup Like a Spaghetti Western: the Good, the Bad, the Ugly
The sun shines most of the time. What rain there is brings a welcome cool. In the late, lazy afternoons a mist forms on the Arno and the river itself seems to rise and shroud the city’s graceful bridges.
Embraced by Florence’s serene beauty and calm it is difficult to comprehend the actions of soccer hooligans in Cagliari and Milan. Or the rampage of basketball fans that left seven dead in Detroit last week.
Indeed, relative to Florence’s blase attitude toward the World Cup, any emotional display generated by sport--and not by art or music or beauty --seems uncivilized. This passion people hold for sport and art are made odd bedfellows this summer in Italy.
More than anything the duality of the beautiful and the ugly has emerged as a dominant theme in the first 10 days of the World Cup. The graceful and creative play of some of the world’s best soccer players is surely as artful as Michelangelo’s rendering of a marble David.
So, too, has the good and bad of the World Cup impinged on the life of the Italian people. For some, la dolce vita has been soured in a morass of construction delays on roads, overburdened phone lines and, in some cities, hordes of nasty soccer fans in too-small T-shirts swilling beer.
Florence has not had this experience. Nationwide, authorities estimate tourism is off by 20% to 30%. But in Florence, the number must be higher. After the World Cup draw last December, the business community of Florence rejoiced that Group A would include Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia and the United States. Americans, observed one Florentine restaurant owner, tip well and “are well-behaved.”
Trouble is, there aren’t many American soccer fans here, or from any other teams in the group. This may account for some of Florence’s failure to kick into full World Cup frenzy. Part of it is the city itself, and part of it is the group.
There are some here to whom the idea of painting your face and screeching at a soccer game is disgusting. They have their art, their music and their beauty.
No doubt these are some of the same people who spat upon members of the national team when they assembled here. No, there is no lack of passion for soccer, just no great interest in the national team.
Those Italians who do bear allegiance to the national team aren’t in Florence, because the team has based itself in and around Rome.
The Austrians have been commuter fans--driving into town for the games in their well-maintained automobiles, wearing their pointy red and white hats. Whatever money they might have spent in restaurants or bars is not forthcoming, either, as they seem to be packing their own lunches.
The Czechs aren’t here because they have little money to spend on such indulgences. Those fans who simply could not bear to miss this have been sleeping in their cars and in the Florence train station, cheerily bedding down in the hubbub, happy to be a part of this spectacle.
The Czechs have been rewarded by their team’s fairly remarkable romp through Group A. Undefeated Czechoslovakia plays Italy tonight in Rome to determine the winner of the group.
The Czechs celebrated doubly last week, having held a free and democratic election and beating the United States, a longtime symbol of democracy, on the same day.
At least for the Czechs there is stability. For the Romanians there is only the fear and uncertainty that comes of too much upheaval and too little news.
It has been agonizing for Romanian players and fans who have seen television footage of beatings and mass arrests in Bucharest. Ugliness amid the beauty.
To date some 100 Romanians have requested political asylum in Italy. Some Romanians, fearful of returning home, are approaching anyone--even journalists--seeking a safe haven.
A busload of soccer fans traveled to the town of Telese, where the Romanian team is training. When they arrived, the Romanians begged the mayor of the tiny town to grant them asylum.
The mayor could only tell them to go on to Rome.
“I’ve seen them crying in these last few days,” the mayor, Pino D’Occhio, said. “It was anguishing for us. Imagine what it was like for them.” But there was also some gladness amid the sadness.
About 1,000 Romanian fans and officials were invited to the World Cup by the Italian government, in recognition of the heroism of Romania’s anti-Communist revolution last December. Italians of another generation well remember their own lives under a Fascist yoke.
And, just when humanity raises its voice the loudest, there is a small cry for human decency, too.
Last week a Romanian journalist who saved for 18 months to cover the World Cup was robbed of his passport and most of his money.
The reporter, Radu Timofte, slept in his car to save money and thieves in the southern city of Bari broke into his car, leaving him only $10.
Reporters and officials, when they heard of Timofte’s plight, took up a collection in a gesture the Romanian called “beautiful.”
Beauty, it seems, requires ugliness to give it resonance.
