Italian city calm after soccer fans run riot

Press, 5 June 1982, Page 9

Italian city calm after soccer fans run riot

NZPA-Reuter ' Rome Local councillors have spent the night trying to pacify Nocera Inferiore, an impoverished southern Italian town, where almost a third of the population ran amuck because the home football team failed to win promotion. At dusk the Mayor (Mr Salvatore Gargiulo) asked the police for a truce and sent his councillors on to the tense) ■ rubble-strewn streets. They were trying to calm bands of soccer fans, who had forced schools, banks and offices -to .'/close, 'and' blocked. all rail traffic between Rome and Sicily. The. police said that up-to 15,000 Of. the town’s 50,000 people had been involved in two days of riots which rocked the tomato-processing

centre a short drive from Italy’s millionaire seaside resorts of Amalfi and Sorrento. Crowds surged oh to main roads, including the NaplesSalerno motorway, causing long traffic jams and effectively sealing off the town. At one stage they stoned an express train from Turin and fought a fierce battle with police officers besieged in the station.

The police, backed by reinforcements from Naples, Calabria and Caserta, arrested 15 people for riotous assembly. At least 20 people were injured in the .clashes.. X Townspeople f sai'df '.the--trouble, began’ on Thursday when Nocera’s soccer team failed to win promotion to Italy’s second division because of a disputed match result. - 1 ' ■' • Fans in Nocera demanded

a play-off with Campobasso, their closest rivals, who had won promotion as a result of the football authorities' decision.on that match. - Rioters set cars and buses on fire, smashed shop windows, and set up barricades. Nocera’s. crumbling buildings still bear the scars of an earthquake which devastated southern Italy in 1980. The town depends almost entirely on the tomato-cann-ing industry which is often hit by bad seasons or market gluts. . / . r “We: -can't’ <. win.’X '.orie middle-ag'ed ’' resident®' said,, “we’re- plggued with, xeartfr) quakes, ? unemployment and, the r ariibrra (jyaplds'jMgfia)./ “Soccer js the only .thing we have, abut Campojjasso has more political clout so we lose out again.” ‘ ’ .