Milan - The common sight of empty curves in Serie A football stadiums in the wake of violence can end with the help of school children, an ant-hooligan initiative says. The initiative promoted by the Solidarity Forum of Lombardy called "Kick away violence" was presented this week in Milan.
The campaign focuses on school children with support from local police, the sports ministry, local clubs Inter and AC Milan, and various city associations.
Between January and June, school children are to meet police officers at the Giuseppe Meazza stadium and visit the museum of the two local clubs.
Other initiatives involving the schools have already been experimented at the Meazza and other stadiums, where sectors once occupied by die-hard fans are now reserved for children.
The initiatives follow the examples of other countries such as England and Germany, where first division football has become a family affair with many parents and their children attending matches.
In Italy, the ministry of interior has banned Juventus fans from the top-billing match at AC Milan Saturday, limiting the sale of tickets to residents of the Milan province.
Visiting fans will also be banned from the Sunday games Fiorentina-Inter, Torino-Genoa and Catania-Palermo. The Atalanta- Napoli match even takes place behind closed doors.
The latest crackdown on hooligans stems from the violence on November 11 following the accidental killing of a Lazio fan by a policeman.
Hooligans attacked police offices in Milan and Rome, where Inter Milan-Lazio and Roma-Cagliari were cancelled, while the game Atalanta-AC Milan was suspended when home fans damaged a glass barrier.
"These are the decisions and they they must be respected," Milan vice president Adriano Galliani said. "We are sorry about it, but we hope it helps."
Mild criticism came from Juve president Giovanni Cobolli Gigli, who did not debate the decision of the ministry, but said he "did not believe that our fans have committed major violence."
A ministry committee monitoring football violence, however, found that Juve hooligans recently were involved in seven violent episodes in which four policeman and three fans were injured.
The game in Catania will be monitored carefully as the Massimino stadium hosts a Sicily derby that last season, on February 2, was marred by the death of a policeman in riots with local fans.
"Closing the curves is a very bad signal, but it had to be given," said national team coach Roberto Donadoni, who was born near Bergamo and began his footballer career with Atalanta.
Donadoni said the riots during Atalanta-AC Milan "were a bad chapter in the history of Bergamo, and must be sharply condemned, but they don't delete all the good things that were done in the past."
The European Union, too, is to address violence in football in a meeting being held in Brussels Wednesday and Thursday.
Franco Frattini, vice president of the European Commission, said on his website that he hopes that the meeting will help to free football from violence.
Frattini underlined "the changes in the roots and the targets of violence in sport. Once they were confined to the stadiums and to the actors of the event (teams, fans, referees).
"Now (hooliganism) is a true school of ideological and political violence, with racist and xenophobic tones, which uses sports events as an occasion to clash mostly against the police around the stadium and in the whole city," he said.
