WORLD CUP USA ‘94: QUARTERFINALS : COMMENTARY : She Has Plenty of Hooligan Stories, Even if He Doesn’t

I went looking for hooligans Saturday morning and found Paola. It was love at first interview.

We were aboard the official World Cup ’94 soccer train to Foxboro. Train No. 3, Boston’s Back Bay Station to Foxboro, Spain versus Italy quarterfinal. I was continuing my search for trouble among soccer fans, both an assignment and a curiosity. Is this not the sport in which most of the real action takes place in the stands and near the stadiums, before and after--rather than during--the games? And don’t these rowdy fans, long ago labeled hooligans, do some of their best work on trains?

So a fully advertised soccer train could not be passed up.

Nor could Paola, who said her last name was Batti, said she had moved to the Boston area from Salerno less than four months ago, said she worked in Boston’s North End at a coffee house called Caffe Dello Sport, and said she knew all about such things as hooligans. She would talk to an American newspaperman, in her broken yet passable English, only if he would pronounce her name correctly.

“Not Paula . . . BOWL-a,” she said.

And so it was done. BOWL-la. BOWL-la. It’s a hard life on the World Cup soccer beat; interviews must be taken where they are found.

Besides being a fountain of information about what it is like in a country where there are rowdy soccer fans, she was a visual Italian cliche--long brown hair, dark brown eyes and nonstop hand movement when she talked. And if there was any question for whom she would be rooting, her T-shirt took care of that. It read: “So Sexy, So Spicy, So Italian.”

“This train is boring,” she said, glancing about the packed car that had the look and feel of a Tuesday morning commuter ride from New Haven. “When I went to games for Salerno, we would sing on the train. Sometimes, dance in the seats.”

Across the way, a man in a shirt, tie and USA soccer cap turned the page of the Boston Globe sports section and yawned.

“We would go to games in Italy in crowds,” BOWL-la continued. “You would just be carried along. You give somebody a bite from your sandwich. Then, later, you ask their name.

“Always, it was excitement. Salerno played a few years ago, how you say, to go from stage C to stage B. The goal we got, it was like suddenly everything and everybody moved. I was three rows higher than where I had been. I don’t know what happened to me. I was just there, all of a sudden.”

She said she had seen the bad things too and she described some real live hooligans.

“I saw them come one time--it was our city against another close by--and they came from their town to our buses and threw rocks,” she said. “The rocks break the windows and people bleed from cuts. I was not on the bus, so I was not hit.

“I had a boyfriend. They get in fight with fists and he was hurt. They get crazy and hit each other over the heads with bottles.”

Around us, the soccer train to Foxboro clickety-clacked along. It was quiet, comfortable, efficient. Even sponsored. The official name of the train was the Coca Cola/Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority World Cup ’94 Train. Corporate America leaves no stone unturned in its efforts to logo our lives.

An official for MBTA, Mike O’Malley, said that the idea for the train came from similar trains that are run for New England Patriot football games, also played at Foxboro Stadium. This was the sixth and final World Cup game in Foxboro, and O’Malley said that there has not been one problem or negative incident on the 24 runs that have been made.

“We knew about the potential problems, and so some additional police presence was introduced, maybe four or five policemen per train,” O’Malley said. “But we have not had one incident.”

So, my search for hooligans had produced nothing again. With one week to go in USA’s World Cup ‘94, I am looking total failure right in the face.

Paola was much luckier. Her team beat Spain, 2-1, and her fellow Italian fans rocked all of Foxboro with songs and dancing and flag-waving. The celebration for Paola and thousands of Italian fans was to carry on in Boston’s North End Saturday night.

I pondered going myself, as part of my duties on the ever-tough World Cup soccer beat, but decided against it when reminded, in a call home, of the danger of large crowds and alimony.