Soccer in Sun and Shadow

Chants of Scorn

It’s not on any map, but it’s there. It’s invisible, but there it is. A barrier that makes the memory of the Berlin Wall look ridiculous: raised to separate those who have from those who need, it divides the globe into north and south, and draws borders within each country and within each city. When the south of the world commits the affront of scaling the walls and venturing where it shouldn’t, the north reminds it, with truncheons, of its proper place. And the same thing happens to those who attempt to leave the zones of the damned in each country and each city.

Soccer, mirror of everything, reflects this reality. In the middle of the 1980s, when Napoli started playing the best soccer in Italy thanks to the magical influx of Maradona, fans in the north of the country reacted by unsheathing the old weapons of scorn. Neapolitans, usurpers of prohibited glory, were snatching trophies from the ever powerful, and it was time to punish the insolence of the intruding scum from the south. In the stadiums of Milan and Turin, banners insulted: “Neapolitans, welcome to Italy.” Or they evoked cruelty: “Vesuvius, we’re counting on you.”

And chants that were the children of fear and the grandchildren of racism resounded more loudly than ever:

What a stench, the dogs are running,

all because the Neapolitans are coming.

Oh cholerics buried by quake,

you’ve never seen soap, not even a cake,

Napoli shit, Napoli cholera,

you’re the shame of all Italia.

In Argentina the same thing happens to Boca Juniors. Boca is the favorite of the spiky-haired, dark-skinned poor who have invaded the lordly city of Buenos Aires from the scrubby hinterlands and from neighboring countries. The enemy fans exorcise this fearful demon:

Boca’s in mourning, everybody knows,

’cause they’re all black, they’re all homos.

Kill the shit-kickers,

they aren’t straight.

Throw the bumpkins in the River Plate.