Hooligans overshadow Italian soccer openers

On a weekend when the sport should have been celebrating Jose Mourinho's Serie A debut as Inter Milan's coach and Brazilian superstar Ronaldinho's debut as an AC Milan player, it was left instead to the rabble to grab the headlines.

And it did.

Several hundred alleged fans of Napoli commandeered and subsequently vandalized a train taking them from Naples to Rome. The damage was estimated at $730,000 as the hooligans slashed seats, smashed windows and exploded firecrackers. Four railway workers were injured.

Other troublemakers inflicted $88,000 worth of damage to buses in Rome, where police arrested five people before AS Roma's 1-1 tie with Napoli.

In the usual too-little-too-late apology that comes out of Italian soccer headquarters with increasing frequency these days, Giancarlo Abete, president of the soccer federation, appealed for a crackdown "against these delinquents who ruin the image of football on a national and international level," saying, "football is not represented by these people."

Oh, but it is. And unless Italian authorities do more than turn a blind eye to the hooliganism that has plagued the country and the sport for several seasons, Italian soccer will find itself increasingly the target of scorn and ridicule outside Italy.

Given the incidents on the opening weekend of the nine-month season, it might well be time for UEFA, soccer's European governing body, to consider banning Italian teams from European competition -- either on a case-by-case basis or in total -- just as it did when English fans were running riot years ago.

Certainly, there was little done by Italian authorities in Naples when the hooligans took over the train, boarding without tickets and then fighting with police and railway workers.

Instead of doing the sensible thing and keeping the train in Naples while arresting the troublemakers, police instead advised law-abiding and fare-paying passengers to disembark and take other trains.

Incredibly, they then allowed the train to leave for Rome, with the hooligans on board, claiming that the decision was made for public security reasons.

What utter nonsense.

"It is disgusting that a group of thugs could be allowed to do this to us," one dislodged female passenger said.

She was correct, but in Naples these days, thugs appear to have more rights than citizens.