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There is a section of Italy that it using football as a way of campaigning for independence. Matthew Barker tells all

Last month’s European and local elections saw the Lega Nord increase its support base beyond the traditional heartland of the Veneto and Lombardy in the north-east of Italy, reaching as far down as Emilia Romagna and the northern edges of Tuscany. The Lega, seeking to break away from the national government in Rome and the Mezzogiorno south, forms a strong coalition with Silvio Berlusconi’s ruling People of Freedom party, and has been steadily winning over disgruntled voters with far-right policies based exclusively around twin obsessions of immigration and security.

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A Yorkshire MEP is campaigning for an investigation into the 1973 Cup-Winners Cup final. Matthew Barker wonders why

The 1973 European Cup-Winners Cup final wasn’t, by all accounts, a great game. Leeds United and Milan kicked chunks out of each other in a typically brutal early-Seventies footballing culture-clash, played in a torrential downpour in Salonika. Luciano Chiarugi scored the only goal from a third-minute free-kick ­(indirect, claim Leeds), with the Italians happy to defend deep in a catenaccio master class under the tutelage of Nereo Rocco. Don R­evie’s team had three penalty claims waved away by Greek referee ­Christos Michas, while Norman Hunter was sent off. It was, as Italian newspaper Il ­Manifesto recently put it, “a disaster from beginning to end … a night of rain and rage”, with a disgruntled local crowd pelting Milan’s players with missiles as they attempted to celebrate their win.

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We take playing international football in England for granted but as Steve Menary explains it can be a long fight to be gifted that right

When West Ham signed Valon Behrami from Lazio this summer, he became the club’s first ever Swiss international. His status may change on December 19, when FIFA meet for a second time to consider a membership application from Kosovo, where Behrami was born in 1985.

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Diego Maradona's Napoli were strong favourites but it was Milan who won the title, writes Daniele Meloni

The long-term significance
Silvio Berlusconi – the media tycoon who took over AC Milan in 1986 – first noticed the inexperienced Arrigo Sacchi when his Parma side won at Milan in the 1986-87 Coppa Italia. Berlusconi duly hired Sacchi. With his belief in zonal marking and total football, Sacchi was a revolutionary who changed the mentality of the Italian game, especially when his Milan side won back-to-back European Cups in 1989 and 1990. 

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The murder of a Sicilian policeman at a game led to new measures to combat Italy’s ultra culture. But, as Vanda Wilcox explains, everyone from the government down sees politics as the cause of the violence

On February 2, Inspector Filippo Raciti was killed by a blow to the stomach, during a deliberate ambush of the police planned and carried out by CC Catania ultras at their Sicilian derby by Palermo. The fatal weapon was a piece of sink wrenched from the wall of a stadium toilet. The police were attacked with rocks, metal bars, baseball bats, flares and – last but not least – home-made bombs, one of which stuck the dying inspector, causing further injuries. Before the match, Catania ultras had collected a huge arsenal of weapons in a stadium storeroom.

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