FOOTBALL IS COMING HOME

Although I was born and raised in Rome, I support Juve. My choice was based on the need to find a club that could compete with AC Milan and Inter, my older brothers’ favorite teams. I was barely six years old when I first saw Juve play. It was in Perugia (my father’s team) and “we” somehow lost 0-1 thanks to a goal by Renato Curi. As a result, Torino won the scudetto. What a tragedy! But the real tragedy happened a year later when I returned to Perugia hoping for a better Juve performance: Curi collapsed on the pitch and died of a heart attack. Talk about putting things in perspective.

Over the next decade, I watched Juve “under cover” at the Olimpico against Roma and Lazio, and in other cities as well. It could be dangerous. At Marassi stadium, for instance, Genoa’s ultras invaded our curva (end) wielding broken bottles. When all was said and done, a guy two rows in front of me was oozing blood from a stab wound in his leg. Surely it would have been safer in Turin, but as a young teenager living more than 400 miles away it was tough to make the pilgrimage to the Stadio Comunale. And after I moved to the United States in the mid-1980s, it seemed as if I had been sentenced to never attend a Juve “home” match. A victim of contrappasso for my act of betrayal of Roma and Lazio?

The inauguration of Juve’s new stadium is inspiring me to finally make the journey to Turin.

September 8, 2011, heralds the arrival of a new era in Italian football, or calcio as we call it. Juve’s friendly against Notts County — the club responsible for the Old Lady’s adoption of black-and-white kits — marks the first time an Italian club will play in its privately owned stadium.

It is a welcoming football-specific stadium: no track, no moat, no fence. It has a capacity of 41,000 seats and a design similar to many English Premier League grounds. Juve’s stadium provides a long-awaited alternative to overpriced, under-serviced, militarized, and outdated grounds found all over the peninsula. It rises on the ashes of its cursed predecessor, the Delle Alpi. Built on the outskirts of Turin for the 1990 World Cup, Delle Alpi stadium was twice as expensive as originally planned, featured terrible sight lines (largely due to a never-used running track), a bumpy playing surface, and abominably high maintenance costs. In 2003 Juve took it over from the city under a 99-year lease and demolition started in 2008. In the meantime, both Juve and Torino relocated to the downsized ex-Comunale stadium, renamed Olimpico after hosting the inaugural and closing ceremonies for the 2006 Winter Olympics.

Looking at the calendar, I could make the Piedmont derby between Juve and Novara on December 18 . . .

For a virtual tour of the new stadium click here. For videos documenting the construction process go here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.