THE RESTLESS NATIVE:

It has been an amazing week, with the highlight occurring on Wednesday, when Renato and I attended the Napoli vs. Ascoli football, soccer in the States, game at the stadium.

We arrived early to get in line to buy tickets. Remember that I mentioned, in an earlier column, that lines in Italy don’t grow in length, but width? Well this line was no different.

A relatively new protocol for thwarting scalpers tested the patience of thousands. When you buy a ticket, you must present some form of legal identification so that your name can be typed onto the ticket. Each ticket must have a different name verified by each attending person’s I.D. At the gate, attendants request to see your ticket and I.D. again before you enter. Of course, both names must match.

In line, people stood skin-to-skin peering over each other’s shoulders toward the low window of the ticket booth. Men bent to look inside, but the barred window was murky and half obscured by graffiti — too dirty to see anything of the slow-to-move cashier. Renato kept a protective hand on me at all times and carried my backpack containing my camera and two lenses. When people complained or commented out loud, he would nod in agreement before translating for me.

When we finally had our tickets in hand, we emerged from the line, and I felt the relief of open space again. There was still plenty of time before the start of the match, so Renato and I walked around the stadium looking for a T-shirt for me.

I’m glad I waited to buy one at the game because they had a wide variety, and I eventually chose one that cost 10 euros.

As we walked, Renato and I passed lots of other fans, showing their love for Naples with T-shirts, scarves (I was wearing the one I bought from Bruno, of course) and hats. But there was one who took the cake — a little old woman, walking alone, dressed head to toe in fan-wear. A light blue skirt and shoes, a Napoli shirt, scarf and flag and, topping it all off, a Napoli hat set on top of her gray curly hair.

Somewhere, a souvenir shop exploded and all of its remains had landed on her!

After everything we went through in line, it was quite amusing to watch a number of young men hop the fence into the stadium, while several police officers, milling about nearby, simply watched. It seemed that the only trouble these people were going to get was going to come from the fence!

Renato told me that his father and brother had once gotten into a game without any tickets, along with nearly a 1,000 other people, thanks to a police officer holding a gate open and waving people in.

I was again surprised when Renato and I entered the stadium and presented our tickets and I.D.s and the attendant didn’t even glance at them. Nor did he search my backpack. I was beginning to wonder how the system to stop scalpers was doing anything but creating a hassle at the ticket booth!

Once inside, Renato and I sat down in Curve B, located behind one of the goals. It’s the most popular cheering section in the stadium. In this section, men arrive with bullhorns and giant flags to lead the fans in cheers and dances, which means that most of the curve remains standing for the whole game.

When the match started, I was a bit surprised to learn from Renato that some of the cheers (more like jeers) were directed at Ascoli’s goal keeper and involved some less than polite remarks about his mother. Every time the keeper released the ball, the crowd would slowly build up its voice, until the kick or toss, when they would finally shout in unison at him.

I wonder how good my stats would have been when I played as a water polo goalie if I had such a ferocious crowd surrounding me! Then again, this is Naples and, as Renato has informed me, it’s one of the biggest soccer-fan cities in all of Europe.

Shortly after the game started, I began scanning the stadium for a scoreboard to see how much time had passed. Renato pointed to a dark strip along a lower, center tier and explained that the scoreboard hadn’t worked in a long time and, when it had worked, it only worked for one season!

This, to me, is soccer (or any sport) at its best. Here, it’s not about the sponsorships or the technology or even the tickets. It’s about the fans, the players and the game.

And these fans were great. Throughout the match, they lighted flares and waved them around before throwing them down toward the field. Just after Renato and I took our seats, I noticed that firefighters were hosing down the areas behind the goals. Renato explained that this was to keep a fire from spreading.

Bottles of water were also hurled at the sidelines, where ball boys and security guards lined the field. More than one strong arm, with a good aim, had these same people ducking out of the way. There was a small portion of seats allocated for Ascoli fans. Most of these seats were protected by netting, to spare them from the same showering as the guards on the ground.

The different sections of seats were divided by glass partitions and, just like the fence around the stadium, fans faced no opposition in climbing them. In fact, they lined up in droves to climb, and the rest of the crowd cheered as various people, who experienced particular difficulty in reaching their summit, finally crested the top and jumped down to the other side. This is definitely a place where the fans rule.

Despite how it may sound, it was not a chaotic scene but rather an event pulsing with enthusiasm and pride and active spectatorship.

Of course, there was more going on at the stadium than just cheering and bottle throwing. There was the game too! At first, it seemed that Ascoli could do no wrong, or at least that’s how the referees saw it, and the Napoli fans responded accordingly with lots of bottles and exclamations punctuated by Italian hand gestures.

Really, I don’t know what I enjoyed watching more, the game or the fans. Plus it was pretty fun watching Renato in his element too.

We went through 90 intense minutes without a single goal from either side before Napoli scored in the first 15 minutes of overtime. Napoli went home the victor, after Ascoli, whose uniforms look like those worn by American referees, failed to score in the second 15 minutes. The crowd loved it, and they let the world know!

Renato and I waited in our seats as people flooded out of the stadium after the game. When all of the fans had gone and only a few attendants were still wandering around the field, we got up to go. However, we found all the exits locked. It was just like the beach in Serapo, only on a larger scale, and there was no way we were going to climb these gates (despite all the successful efforts we had witnessed earlier).

Luckily we found an attendant, and he directed us to an exit being used by the police and fire departments. We followed a bus out, and the gates were shut behind us. Yet another successful escape!

Watching the Napoli versus Ascoli game will definitely go down as one of the highlights of my stay in Naples. It gave me a taste of the life here that I had yet to experience, and I’d love another plate. Maybe next time I’ll know more of the words to the cheers and jeers.

On Sunday, Napoli faced one of its biggest rivals, Juventus, and tickets sold out quickly. People searched all over for tickets, thousands waited outside the stadium, hoping to get a chance to go to the game. Come playing time, there was nothing left to buy — well, nothing legal. Only the scalpers had anything to offer — at a higher price, of course, and with no guarantee that any buyer would be able to get in.

I didn’t get to see the game, but at midnight, as the match went to penalty shots, I hung halfway out a window, at the hostel, to listen to a car radio down on the street. Unfortunately, I couldn’t hear much or understand what I did hear, but the body language of the small gathering around the car was easy to read.

Napoli won the game by one goal.

I hope to get the opportunity to see another match, but I’m going to have to wait awhile on that one.

So until next time, ciao ragazzi!