The Mafias surge on modern Italian Football

The encroachment on Italian football by figure heads of the modern day mafia is no secret in the media and streets of those who live in Italy, where football is deeply woven into Italian culture. However, across European and continental borders, few would bat an eyelid to the influence they have both inside the stadium, as well as the commercial circus outside the stadiums. Mafia links with Italian football clubs are dotted all around, from small lower league clubs such as Giugliano Calcio 1928, to big heavyweights of the Serie A such as Lazio and Juventus. The football clubs in Milan have had the most high profile links with mafia organisations in recent years . The two main teams, AC Milan and Inter Milan are super clubs, who are both incredibly successful historically, and are known globally. Both clubs share the largest stadium in Italy, the San Siro, and this is the epicentre of where mafia thugs make a large share of their wealth in recent times.   

Mafia’s interest in Football

Mafia families have historically been feared in southern Italy throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The mafia are known for their violence, and this was no different in the 1980’s, where over a thousand people were left dead in a Cosa Nostra conflict. This included deaths of judges and journalists. The Cosa Nostra originated in Sicily in the mid nineteenth century. Originally earning most of their income from funneling state money into their own pockets and low level protection rackets, the younger generation had higher ambitions. They started getting involved in high level heroin and cocaine trades, which ignited a mafia war.  
  The violent aftermath saw hundreds of mafia leaders and participants arrested and significantly weakened the Cosa Nostra clan. 

Mafia clans always exploited business for financial gain, however the Ndrangheta clan realised violence was bad for business and came up with a strategy to keep law enforcement and the media off their backs, while making significant sums of money. They expanded their wings by laundering money through legitimate businesses. Certainly not an uncommon practice in illegal crime organisations, in fact it was adopted heavily by the drug lords in Columbia around this time. The Ndrangheta mapped it out professionally and rigidly and it led to them gaining ‘legitimacy’,  influence and of course, easy money.

Fast forward to the modern day, the Ndrangheta clan have their handprints in up to eighty countries and are estimated to make up $60 billion dollars per year. Clans initially used smaller football clubs in rural areas to earn prestige and gain loyalty, continuing with their policy of staying clear of attention, thus avoiding the giants of the game. An example of this would be the local football team of Quarto ( a north-west town in Naples), who had an owner that was a well known Camorra Kingpin, Giuseppe Polverino, up until 2011. This wasn’t exclusive to smaller teams though the late Diego Maradona was famously pictured with the Camorra throughout his stint playing for Napoli in Naples. The globalization and sheer financial capital of modern football for the elite teams however quickly became an opportunity that couldn’t be missed for the elite clans. Legitimacy, influence and money are not just obtainable at the biggest football clubs, but a serious amount of it. For example, AC Milan is a historical club founded in 1907 (legitimacy), it is a livelihood to millions of people (influence), and has annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of euros (money).  Owning the top football clubs in Europe would be very unlikely to obtain for crime organisations such as the Ndrangheta. They had to find a back door to enter the riches of the football economic empire.

Ultras

Football Ultras in simple terms are the most passionate fans in a club's fanbase. They often chant the loudest and create the atmosphere inside a stadium for the rest of the ‘casual’ supporters to follow along with. They also often organise marches outside stadiums before games and create big Tifos to display a message to their team or opposition. A Tifo is a visual display of any choreographed flag or banner that is held up by fans during a match. Having originated in Italy, it is now adopted in many football stadiums throughout the world. Generally inside the stadium, ultras are a positive to their football club, often becoming the 12th man that the home team needs in tense matches. That being said, they can also cause great headaches for board members of football clubs. Violence has always had a significant role in the ultras culture scene. Likewise with hooliganism across English football throughout the 1980s, ultra organisations saw fighting the enemies as a fundamental principle to show passion and pride to their club. The violence has gotten more extreme in recent years though. In an article with UnHerd, Tobias Jones mentions how he interviewed many ultra members. One former head Ultra described the change in violence to Tobias, “we’ve gone from fist-fights to knives, from knives to… ambushes, to Molotov cocktails, to bombs and to pistols. It keeps getting worse.”   

Violence isn’t the only threat that certain ultras groups bring to football. Counterculture setups can often get wrapped up in outside influence such as certain extremist political views. This is no different within certain ultras groups as radical far right and left ideas are shared (particularly the far right in Italy’s case), which has disrupted the game of football. Racism amongst the stands of Italian stadiums became rather common, with multiple incidents being reported over the last thirty years, including racist abuse to players. In 2019, a group of Lazio fans unveiled a Benito Mussolini banner before proceeding to racially abuse AC Milan midfielder Tiemoue Bakayoko ahead of a Semi final clash with the Milan side. This is just one example of many in Italian football stadiums over the last three decades.

The counterculture setups of ultras were a perfect opportunity for Mafia clans to access the football market of the major clubs. The Milan clubs were of particular interest as it gave the lucrative surrounding area of the San Siro to capitalise from.

Tapping into AC and Inter using Ultras

 AC Milan’s ultras are known as the Curva Sud as they are located behind the goal in the south of the San Siro. Naturally Inter’s ultras are named Curva Nord. The boss of the Curva Nord in 2022 was Vittorio Boiocchi. ‘The Uncle’, as many called him, used his position in power to the next level as he corrupted the whole operation, demanding thousands of extra tickets from the club, selling them outside the San Siro as opposed to giving them to members. Boiocchi pocketed this money for himself. An article by The Guardian stated that a wiretap picked up the ultra leader, as “he had boasted about making €80,000 a month”  through this operation. This was unlikely a surprise to many as Boiocchi was no stranger to breaking the law, serving twenty six years in prison for various crimes, including drug trafficking, robbing and kidnapping

Before heading out to watch his beloved Inter take on Sampdoria on 29 October 2022, Boiocchi was shot dead right outside his home. Antonio Belloco was pushed by higher ups within the Curva Nord to be elected as his replacement. Belloco was a key figure amongst the Ndrangheta clan. The Ndrangheta saw the vision and opportunity and pounced. 

AC Milan ultras throughout this era were led by Luca Lucci. Taking over in 2009, he too has had trouble with Italian police. One that sticks out is an assault of an Inter fan, Virgilio Motta, in 2009. The incident costed Motta an eye and three years later to the day, the Inter fan committed suicide. Lucci was sentenced to four and half years in prison. This didn’t stop him from leading the Curva Sud via ‘The Clan 1899’.  He too has had involvement among mafia members throughout this time. His links are tied to the Ndrangheta, where according to the DDA, are involved in importing two tonnes of drugs from Lombardy and Calabria. He was suspected to be involved

Bellocco’s influence

The champions league final of 2023 is a perfect example of the increasing power and influence the mafia-ultra group had on Inter. A monumental occasion for the club as they faced Manchester City in their first Champions league final since famously winning it with Jose Mourinho in 2010. Bellecco and ultra associate Beretta demanded an extra two hundred tickets from the Inter board for the final. A member of the Curva Nord called Head coach Simone Inazaghi informing him of the ticket request and threatened to “cause problems for the club” if it wasn't granted. This just highlights the influence Bellocco had with the mafia under his wing. Direct contact with the Head Coach of the football team. Not board members, not the CEO, but the Head Coach. They indeed were granted those extra tickets for the final. 

The moneymaking farm outside the San Siro that Boiocchi had continued from his predecessors was taken to a new level under Bellocco. Tobias Jones described the operation precisely, “Organised hierarchically, these crews started taking over the curtilage of the San Siro, selling fake merch, hiring out parking spaces, levering beers and bapping burgers. A few of them also began offering à la carte highs: coke, speed, weed or E.” Just like that, the Ndranghata had the San Siro to leach and profit, adding to another very stacked list of income. 

The murder of Bellocco

With Belloco flexing his muscles influencing the ultra’s, asserting his authority over Beratta, tensions reportedly grew between the pair. An incident took place on 4th September 2024 in a car outside of a gym in Milan. A man was dead, stabbed twenty one times in this car. That man was Antonio Belloco. The other man inside that car was Andrea Beretta, who suffered a gunshot wound. It was widely reported that Beretta, who was the heir to the throne following the murder of Boiocchi, was the one who casted Bellocco into the Curva Nord. It seemed though that the clash of egos and loss of status for Beretta was too much for him.

The Italian police saw this as an opportunity to crack down on the mafia-ultra links. In June of this year, nineteen ultras were sentenced on various crimes relating to the Ndranghata Mafia. Lucci was sentenced to ten years. After co operating with Police, and admitting to murdering Bellocco as well as being involved in the murder of his former boss Boiocchi, Beretta was sentenced to a measly ten years too. The conclusion of that lenient sentence is that he gave important information to the Italian authorities.

Crack down or just a stumbling block?

The influence of the mafia has seemingly calmed down after the series of arrests over the last year, spearheaded by the muder of Bellocco. The Ultras of both Milan Clubs have had their power reduced as the clubs rejected hundreds of season ticket requests from fans allegedly affiliated with the ultras. While many see this as a win, others would argue it's another way of disempowering fans, giving club hierarchy the opportunity to raise the already ever growing prices of matchday tickets without backlash.

Additionally, both Milan clubs received compensation of €50,000 due to the reputational damage they took throughout the trial process. Turkish midfielder Hakan Callhanoglu and Head coach (at the time) Simone Inzaghi both received one match bans respectively, after being in contact with some of the ultras on trial

One thing for certain is that the ultras-mafia link had a profound impact on everyone involved in these football clubs from board members, to matchday goers, to the actual players and coaches. Something that on the outside, seemed like passionate people, giving it everything for the local football team, but on the inside, was riddled with corruption, power and violence.

As for whether or not the Mafia's involvement in football in Italy is finished, It's unlikely. Suppressed for now maybe, but there will surely still be links amongst the ultras groups. It also has to be noted that the Milan clubs are far from the only associated clubs with Mafia clan ties. I’m sure as the years go on, more stories will break, tying mafia clans with major football clubs across Italy, and even potentially abroad.