Fiorentina fans chant through minute's silence for Mazzola

Napoli's ultras had already boycotted the trip to Florence in protest, leaving just 45 fans in the away end — and it was that small group who heard the Curva Fiesole turn on Napoli during a silence meant for Sandro Mazzola.

by Gennaro SanninoSunday 20 September, 22:16 CET· 2 hours ago

Lo stadio Diego Armando Maradona di Napoli

Lo stadio Diego Armando Maradona — Foto: Gae C. at Italian Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 3.0

Respect for a loss that touches all of Italian football broke down before the match had even begun. Before kickoff of the lunch match at the Franchi, while the stadium held a minute's silence for Sandro Mazzola, who died in the past few days and was remembered in an official message from SSC Napoli, the section held by Fiorentina's Curva Fiesole (the club's hardcore end) broke into chants against Napoli.

It was not an ordinary afternoon for Napoli's organised support either. The 300 tickets in the away end had sold out days earlier, but Napoli's organised supporter groups then chose to boycott the trip en masse in protest. In the end just 45 Napoli fans were left in the away section at the Franchi, with a banner left outside the ground instead. That small group was the one left to hear their own team targeted at the exact moment the stadium should have stayed silent.

It was not an isolated case on the day. The same disrespect was repeated at the Allianz Stadium, before kickoff of Juventus-Atalanta. Two different grounds, the same failure to keep rivalry out of a minute that was supposed to be the moment the league paused to remember one of its historic figures.

When a chant replaces the silence set aside for someone who is no longer here, the problem stops being about the match — it becomes about the people living that match from the stands.

The 1-1 draw itself, the first of two straight unbeaten results for Napoli, was already covered in Sunday 20 September's match report. What happens before kickoff is a separate story, one with nothing to do with the football, and one that repeated itself, against different targets, in too many Italian grounds on the same day.

Allegri's side left Florence with a 1-1 draw, scored by Gilmour and Jiménez, with the international break now ahead of them. The incident during the minute's silence, though, remains a chapter of its own — the kind that does not close with the final whistle.