Calcio

Last Sunday, I went with Sara, Elyse, and Audrey to a Venetian soccer game. Soccer in Italian is known as “calcio.” I definitely experienced a certain amount of trepidation upon approaching the stadium, because I had heard before of how wild European soccer crowds could become. However, as it turned out, everyone was very nice to us and the crowd was not a great deal wilder than crowds I have been a part of at Purdue football or basketball games. What I found the most interesting, though, was how the battle down on the field was carried over into the stands. As Geertz says, “As much of America surfaces in a ball park, on a golf links, at a race track, or around a poker table, much of Bali surfaces in a cock ring. For it is only apparently cocks that are fighting there. Actually, it is men” (2). This applies just as aptly to an Italian soccer match. It was clearly a male-dominated arena. Though there were women there, females were quite strongly in the minority. Also, interestingly, in the area we were sitting anyway, age-wise we were also in the minority; most of the people around us were at least fifty or sixty years old. There were a few boys who were about twelve or thirteen, but they seemed to be an exception, rather than the norm of the spectators. Possibly across the field, where many banners were waving and where the cheering was loudest, we would have encountered others closer to our own age, but there was no way to get over there, Elyse and Audrey tried.

What fascinated me even more than the demographics of the situation was the way in which the action on the field spilled over into the stands. Not literally, of course, for the players were well contained down on their field. What carried over into the crowd was the battle for supremacy. Significantly, the debates over calls belonged almost exclusively to the crowd. The players, after a call was made, usually just shrugged, helped each other up, and moved on with the game. But in the crowd, certain calls could spark a minutes long debate involving two or more men standing up and yelling at each other over the seats. While the players down on the field simply went about their business, the men in the stands carried the game to a new level by being incredibly invested in the outcome, to the point of yelling across the aisles at each other, sharing in a debate about the match. The importance of this social aspect of attending the game cannot be overlooked. The game itself was only a simulacra of the real match, which was taking place in the stands after every call or goal in the form of heated debates among the men watching. To reiterate Geertz, “For it is only apparently cocks that are fighting there. Actually, it is men” (2). Though, to make the quote more appropriately fit the calcio situation, it ought to state, “For it is only apparently the soccer players that are fighting there. Actually, it is the men in the stands.”