Italy are the football World Cup holders, but recently the tragic events resulting from an upsurge of violence rather confirms what many of us have known for a long time, and that is, the culture of “il calico” or football which has becomed poisoned by various scandals, is being ignored by UEFA.

In January of this year their football world was rocked when an official from amateur club Sammartinese was killed when he was caught up in a fight between players and fans. Barely a month later the Italian Football Federation suspended all Serie A matches after Filippo Raciti, a policeman, was struck by an explosive device and killed at the Sicilian derby between Catania and Palermo. Catania were ordered to play the rest of this season's games behind closed doors.

This weekend waves of protests across the country followed the shooting of Gabriele Sandri a Lazio fan aged 25 by police at a motorway service area when clashes erupted between Lazio and Juventus fans  near Arezzo in Tuscany. An unnamed policeman, who reportedly shot twice in the air to end the fight, hit and accidentally killed the Lazio fan who was sitting in a car, presumably as a result of a ricochet. Later 200 fans in Rome who set fire to cars and smashed the windows of the police barracks,  Atalanta's game with AC Milan in the northern city of Bergamo was abandoned seven minutes after kick-off as fans tried to smash down a glass barrier and invade the pitch despite the team's players and manager urging them to stop the violence. Roma's game with Cagliari was also called off. Crowd trouble also affected a third division match in the southern city of Taranto.The observation that during the funeral the coffin of Gabriele Sandri was carried by some of the players, I found rather alarming as it rather gave support to the football hooligan element in Italy.

English football fans have also suffered at the hands of Italian football yobs.In the UEFA Cup competition quarter final stages in 2006, fans from Middlesborough were stabbed with 10 others injured, whilst in April many Manchester United fans wereinjured, 11 receiving stab wounds during clashes with Lazio's "Irriducibili" or Ultras fans. One ex premiership player Paolo Di Canio is alleged to have links with part of the Ultras group, and you will recall him pushing over referee Paul Alcock after being sent off for Sheffield Wednesday against Arsenal in 1998, for which he received an 11 game ban and a £10,000 fine.

Well in 2005 he was condemned for making Nazi style fascist salutes. After making that salute in the match against Juventus in December 2005, he was suspended for one game by the Italian Football Federation and fined a mere 10,000 Euros. After criticism from politicians for his behaviour, he stated that he would,"always salute as I did yesterday because it gives me a sense of belonging to my people." Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, stated that the salute "did not have any meaning" and described the player as "an exhibitionist but a good lad". His own team Lazio, distanced themselves from his actions. Paolo Di Canio insists that he is free to communicate with his fans in whichever way he pleases, though the Italian constitution considers Fascist propaganda to be illegal. He also claims that he is "a fascist, not a racist. He also has a tattoo on his arm which reads "DUX", which is the Latin title used for former Italian dictator Benito Mussolinii “Il Duce”,  Duce is the Italian word for leader .

In 2006 Serie A was rocked by a scandal involving several clubs with alleged match fixing,  The scandal was uncovered in May 2006 Italian police, implicating league champions Juventus, and other major teams including A. C. Milan, Fiorentina and Reggina when a number of telephone interceptions showed a thick network of relations between team managers and referee organisations. The punishments were initially going to result in a 30 point deduction and relegation of all of the teams to Serie B but in the end only Juventus had to forfeit the last two of its record 29 Serie A titles and play this season in the second division for its part in a scheme to appoint favourable referees to its games. Eventually all five teams involved in the scandal had to start the season with negative points, but the sanctions weren't severe enough to inflict much harm on any of them.

Appeals and challenges meant that the points deductions proposed were reduced and only Juventus was relegated to the Serie B.It has since been playing  to packed house in smaller Italian cities like Trieste and Rimini where many of the local team's supporters are Juventus fans anyway. The two other teams, Fiorentina and Lazio were also supposed to play in the second division this season, but they were saved by the shady legal deals that later lessened the penalties for everyone involved. As for A.C.  Milan, well they went on to beat Liverpool in the final of the UEFA blue ribbon event “The Champions League.” An amazing reward for a club that had been linked too but not proven guilty of match fixing.

All I will remark, is that if half of this collection of alleged corruption and football hooliganism had happened in Great Britain, we would have had the national side thrown out of the Euros, and probably all of our champions league teams banned from taking part in the competition, or am I being paranoid here? The UEFA campaign of Let’s kick racism out of football is undermined regularly when foreign national and club teams who fans mock our black players with monkey chants only receive a fine of a few thousand Euros in this multi-million Euro sport. I call on Platini, to stop worrying about how many English players exist in the Arsenal first team, and deal with this cancer which is out of control in Italy, before it is too late.

Cast a vote… mine is clearly YES.

Fabregas the King.