ITALY: A S ROMA FOOTBALL TEAM PRESENTED TO FANS IN SPITE OF DISPUTE OVER TV RIGHTS WITH THE SERIE A CLUBS.

Record ID: 640527

  • Title: ITALY: A S ROMA FOOTBALL TEAM PRESENTED TO FANS IN SPITE OF DISPUTE OVER TV RIGHTS WITH THE SERIE A CLUBS.
  • Date: 26th August 2002
  • Summary: ROME, ITALY (FILE) (REUTERS) VARIOUS EXTERIOR OF STATE BROADCASTER RAI
  • Embargoed: 10th September 2002 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: ROME, MILAN AND RIMINI, ITALY
  • Country: Italy
  • Topics: General,Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVADN5N2RB81WNDLZRAU2JBFWDL1
  • Story Text: Soccer isn't just a sport for Italians, it's a way of life. The delay of the new season until September 15 due to a dispute over television rights has hit fans hard but they are not prepared to give soccer the red card just yet.
    Sixty thousand A.S. Roma fans packed into Rome's Olympic stadium last weekend for the presentation of this season's team. Disputes of any kind were pushed far to the back of their minds as a sea of red and yellow flags and hysterical shouting welcomed the team in a show of emotion that has been repeated for decades.
    Francesco Totti, the Roma captain, was given the usual heroes' welcome despite many critics saying that it is the relationship between inflated player salaries and television income which lies behind the inability to seal a television deal.
    Last season, the top 18 Serie A clubs declared an operating loss of 780 million euro. In a league which used to attract some of the top players in the world, this season will be different with both the soccer clubs and television companies strapped for cash.
    Serie A had long been viewed as the pinnacle of European soccer but this year even a club as highly regarded as Fiorentina has gone bankrupt after gross over-spending and under-achievement. In European competition, no Italian club has reached the knock-out stages of the Champions' League for the past two seasons, and the last club to win a European trophy was Lazio in 1999 when they lifted the now-defunct European Cup-Winners' Cup.
    "The Italian league is in coma, we've even seen the end of a football club - something that maybe you could imagine but never think could actually occur - but instead Fiorentina doesn't exist anymore as a football club," said Carlo Zampa, an A.S. Roma official.
    "This serves as an alarm bell as there are many other clubs that aren't in good positions," Zampa warned.
    Fans are praying for some kind of agreement but are not concentrating on the big picture of Italian soccer. As usual their loyalties and interests lie with their clubs. Soccer is and has always been a part of their lives.
    "We need to be patient - anyway Forza Roma, we need to keep going," said Roma fan sixty-five-year-old Renata Rocca.
    "I've been coming to the stadium for fifty years, my husbands a life-member of A.S. Roma, you can imagine how many years we've been coming," Rocca said.
    The football league, headed by Adriano Galliani, postponed the start of the season last week after eight of Italy's Serie A clubs were unable to secure pay-per-view television deals.
    It was hoped that the precious extra time would allow clubs to secure broadcasting contracts on which their survival could depend. Galliani has also warned any club still not ready to play by September 15, the new start date for the season, will lose the first match on paper 3-0.
    Galliani has his own negotiations to do, meeting with the government on September 3 in the hope of brokering a deal with RAI, the Italian state broadcaster. RAI is currently offering half the amount the football league is demanding for the highlights, a sign that television has lost confidence in soccer.
    "I think a solution will be found, probably at the beginning of September, and the whole scenario will be cleared," said media analyst for Deutsche Bank, Alessandro Baj Badino.
    "I think the negotiations between RAI and the Italian premier league football league clubs will come to an end and they will reach a final agreement and the same will happen with the smaller Italian premier league clubs," Badino said.
    As usual any rows in Italy are far from clear-cut. The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi has found himself at the heart of the debate after the football league called on the government to bail out the cash-strapped national sport.
    Berlusconi has refused to intervene but has also found himself in the delicate position of having a finger in every pie. As owner of Serie A club AC Milan, he has a vital interest in the health of the soccer industry, as leader of the parliamentary majority he controls RAI and his family owns the largest commerical broadcaster Mediaset, which could pick up any rights discarded by RAI.
    To top it off, the president of the football league, Adriano Galliani, is also the vice-chairman of A.C. Milan.
    Greeted rather like a soccer star himself at a political meeting in Rimini on Saturday (August 24), Berlusconi joked with the crowd after seeing a banner held up urging him to buy Lazio defender Alessandro Nesta.
    "President, buy Nesta - it's not possible - I know it's not correct that a politician replies to this clearly,"
    Berlusconi said light-heartedly and then on a more serious note added:
    "We have arrived at a level which has got nothing to do either with economics or morality. I believe, in football, we have all made mistakes, we have all made mistakes but now is the time to return the sport to football which these days we can hardly see at all."
    Debt-ridden Lazio may well be forced to take heed of Berlusconi's words. The hugely salaried Alessandro Nesta, Hernan Crespo and Claudio Lopez are all available for transfer, but no one is willing to meet Lazio's unrealistic asking prices.
    Lazio has also had three transfers put on hold after the club could not afford thirty percent of the fees for Christian Manfredini and Eriberto from Chievo and Verona's Massimo Oddo.
    But despite everything, the team still beat Spanish team Deportivo Alaves 2-0 in a friendly on Friday (August 23) and are confident they can do well.
    "There are certainly problems which need to be resolved but I'm confident and believe that in the future everything will be resolved," said Oddo, who is still hoping that he will be able to join Lazio.
    As usual, the fans feel they have been penalised during the dispute but stand firmly behind their team.
    "It's difficult for us, weve been penalised," said Lazio fan Marco Rinaldi. "I think we'll (Lazio) be alright, I hope the best for this season and we'll just have to see how things go."
    One thing seems certain, even if Italy's premier league has lost it's prestigious position in European soccer, for the fans at home, the sport still remains one of the pillars of Italian society.
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