10- THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
BOOKS
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2002
Book chronicles soccer's fanaticism
By Henry C. Jackson hjackson@kansan.com Jayplay Writer
Europeans are famously — or infamously passionate about soccer. This passion often drives them to perform all sorts of unsavory acts: singing, rioting, looting and, in some extreme cases, even killing.
Tim Parks' latest book, A Season with Verona: Travels Around Italy in search of illusion, national character and goals (Secker and Warburg) seeks to get inside the much-hyped world of the European soccer fan.
To accomplish his goal, Parks followed Italian soccer team Hellas Verona through one full season in Italy's top soccer league, Serie A. European soccer fans would call Verona a yo-yo club, constantly going up and down in soccer's promotion/relegation system. This system sends the best teams in the second division up Serie A every year and sends the worst teams in Serie A down a division.
Each of the 34 chapters of Verona centers on one game of Verona's Serie A season, giving a blow-by-blow account as Verona struggles to stave off demotion.
During his narration of the grueling, nearly 10-month-long Serie A, Parks delves into many aspects of Italian soccer. He gets players' perspectives; Verona's finest are frequently colorful and jovial, even as it becomes apparent their season is doomed to end in failure. Parks even has some access to Verona's boardroom staff, a particularly stuffy bunch, worried about what the financial ramifications of relegation from Serie A will do to the club.
By far the most interesting part of Verona is Parks' assimilation into Verona's tightly knit fan base.
In a sport associated with brutish fans, Verona's crew is one of the meanest and nastiest in the world. How brutal are their fans? Parks calls them "a weekend Taliban." Their actions, however, speak louder than Parks' words. Verona's fans chant racist taunts at opposing teams—black players on opposing teams are "monkeys" — start fights for fun, are prone to
starting pseudo-riots wherever they go and for good measure are usually hopped up on some combination of cocaine, alcohol and adrenaline.
But according to Parks, they are not all bad. He goes to pains to indicate just how normal Verona fans are when they aren't cheering on their soccer club. Parks highlights a man called Forza, who works with disabled children during the week, suggesting a sensitive side not normally found in the inner circles of hooliganism. At game time, though, he's just like the rest: Forza is among the most outspoken and violent of Verona's fans.
If a criticism should be levied against Parks, it is that he is not critical enough of the "unsavory bunch" of fans with whom he has chosen to spend nearly a year of his life. Their antics are as appalling as they are compelling, and though Parks' skillful writing often makes it easy for the reader to empathize with the Verona faithful, sometimes enough is enough. It's just too difficult to comprehend Parks' dismissal of frequently violent and hateful incidents as boys being boys.
Tim Parks' novel,'A Season with Verona,'offers a glimpse into the world of Italian soccer fans.
Parks captures it all in A Season with Verona, an outstanding glimpse into a culture Americans, for the most part, have only heard about on television.