Supporters and rivalries
Roma fans at the Stadio Olimpico.
Roma is the fifth most supported football club in Italy behind
Juventus,
Internazionale,
Milan and
Napoli with around 6% of Italian football fans supporting the club (according to the Doxa Institute-L'Espresso’s research of April 2006).
Historically the largest section of Roma supporters in the city of Rome have come from the
inner-city, especially
Testaccio.
The traditional
ultras group of the club was
Commando Ultrà Curva Sud commonly abbreviated as
CUCS; this group was founded by the merger of many smallers groups and was considered one of the most historic in the history of
European football.
However, by the mid-1990s
CUCS had been usurped by rival factions and ultimately broke up. Since that time, the
Curva Sud of the
Stadio Olimpico has been controlled by more right-wing groups;
A.S. Roma Ultras,
Boys,
Giovinezza and others. The oldest group
Fedayn is
apolitical however and politics is not the
raison d'être of Roma, just a part of their overall identity. In September 2009 the club unveiled plans to build a new
55,000-capacity stadium in Rome's western suburbs.
The most known club anthem and motto is
Roma,Roma,Roma by local singer
Antonello Venditti. The title roughly means "Roma is not to be questioned, it is to be loved" and is sung before each match, the song
Grazie Roma, by the same singer, is played at the end of victorious home games. Recently, the main riff of
The White Stripes song
Seven Nation Army has also become widely popular at games.
In
Italian football Roma are a club with many rivalries; first and foremost is their rivalry with
Lazio, the club who they share the Stadio Olimpico stadium with. The
derby between the two is called the
Derby della Capitale, it is amongst the most heated and emotional
footballing rivalries in the world. The fixture has seen some occasional instances of violence in the past including the death of
Lazio fan, Vincenzo Paparelli in
1979–80 as a result of an
emergency flare fired from the Curva Sud,
and the abandonment of a game in march
2004, following unfounded rumours of a fatality which led to violence outside the stadium.
With
Napoli, Roma also compete in the
Derby del Sole rivalry meaning the "Derby of the Sun".
Nowadays fans also consider other Serie A giants like
Juventus (rivalry born especially in the 1980's),
Milan and
Internazionale (increased in recent years) among their rivals as these four compete for the top four spots in the league table to secure a spot in the
Champions League.
Conflict with English fans
There have been a number of instances of conflict in recent years between some Roma supporters and fans of English clubs, pointing to an apparent dislike for English fans in some Giallorossi supporters.
One reason forwarded for this is the defeat to Liverpool in the
1984 European Cup Final at the Stadio Olimpico,
and the subsequent violence outside the stadium which saw a number of Liverpool fans stabbed.
Since then, there have been further instances of some English supporters being attacked and stabbed in Rome, including incidents in 2001 when Liverpool visited Roma twice and subsequent clashes with Middlesbrough fans in 2006 and Manchester United fans in 2007. In March 2009, a coach carrying Arsenal supporters was attacked by a group of Roma "Ultras" just outside the Stadio Olimpico. The coach's windows were smashed and at least one person entered the vehicle, letting off a flare and stabbed a supporter in the knee.
Arsenal had posted advice to their fans on how to avoid routes taken by Roma Ultras.
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