Over at Spot-on I’m writing about a not very health care topic A brief history of football violence.

Only a few months after winning the World Cup,
Italian football is in crisis – again. Last year a referee-tampering
scandal sent Series A champions and Italy’s most famous club Juventus
to the barren wastelands of Serie B. Last weekend Italian football was
shut down after a policeman was killed by a crowd in a Series A game in
Sicily.

Currently a 17-year-old is the main suspect. And the government has reacted strongly. Apparently only six stadiums are going to be allowed to reopen
any time soon. The others lack the suddenly required safety features
(including close circuit TV) which they’ve supposed to have had for
several years. This includes Italy’s most famous arena, the San Siro in
Milan which is shared between the two giant Milan clubs, AC and Inter.

Anyone who’s ever seen the briefest scenes of Italian football
on TV will probably have been astonished by the huge fluorescent
purpley-red flares set off by the fans standing behind the goals . They
usually are lit when their team scores, but in some cases they’ve been
used to disrupt games. The most notable case was in the semi-final of
the European Champions League played in San Siro Stadium between the
two Milan clubs. Inter were losing, then had a goal disallowed, and their fans threw flares onto the field. One hit the AC Milan goalkeeper.
The game was halted, then abandoned, and later awarded to AC Milan (who
went on to lose the final to Liverpool). Inter’s penalty was the
proverbial slap on the wrist – they were forced to play their next 4
home games in an empty stadium. Go on, continue …