Saturday 5th November 2022 3pm – Serie B – Stadio Mario Rigamonte, Brescia
With Lewes heading in limited numbers to the wilds of Essex for the game on the 5th November in the wind and rain, I had to head to North Italy for work. OK, the work wasn’t due to take place until Monday in Milan but I always want to be well prepared. Football? I didn’t even think about the fact there were four games across the weekend in the region I could attend. Not once. No sir.
First up was a trip east of Milan into the heart of Lombardy on the fast train from Milan to Venice. Essential reading (La Gazzetta dello Sport), essential refreshment Brescia sits in the foothills and neatly sandwiched between Lake Garda and d’Iseo. It is a wealthy city, located on a trade route from Venice to Milan and onwards. Roughly translated it meant stepping off the fast train from Milan in my jeans and Lewes coat immediately marked me out as an “outsider”. But football is a great equaliser and thus I was sure I’d be welcomed with open arms as I rocked up to the Stadio Mario Rigamonti for the lunch time game against Ascoli.
Brescia to me means Roberto Baggio, wearing the famous blue shirt with the white chevron. The Divine Ponytail played for Brescia Calcio for four seasons at the end of his career, back in 2004, making nearly 100 appearances as the club enjoyed an extended spell in the top division, the club so grateful that they retired the Number 10 shirt when he left. But it isn’t just Baggio who is associated with the city. Legendary AC Milan skipper, Franco Baresi, legendary midfielder Andrea Pirlo and legendary Pope Paul XI all hailed locally although monuments were few and far between in the city center. What there was though was Europe’s 2nd biggest Beatles Museum. Alas, it was closed on a Saturday and I couldn’t find any specific (or tenuous) link between the Fab Four and the city. A mystery that will be solved on another day.
Brescia are a typical yo-yo club, bouncing between the top two divisions, having last played in Serie A two seasons ago, then losing out in the Play-offs last season to immediately return. This season it has been a slow start, coming into this game three points and four places outside the play-offs, one spot below the visitors from Marche, some 350 miles to the south.
The number one question I’m asked about watching football abroad is how I get tickets. You don’t need an O-Level in Italian to be able to navigate a website these days – most of the major clubs now have English versions, if not then Google is your friend. Twenty Euro gets you a ticket for a decent ticket at Brescia these days. If you want any type of cover (the “Preferencia”) then treble that, but with the sun shining and the mercury hitting twenty degrees, sitting al-fresco wasn’t going to be an issue which is handy as three of the four stands these days are of the Meccano variety. The Italian’s brought in a law regarding ticket purchases a few years ago that every ticket had to have the purchasers name and ID details on. All good as long as you don’t forget to bring the right ID, and only have your Tesco clubcard with you which is hit or miss as to whether they will let you in.
Almost twenty years ago to the day I’d made my first, and only visit, to Brescia back at the time when Baggio was playing here. The club back then didn’t have a website, the city didn’t have a metro and the weather didn’t get the memo about it needing to be dry, let alone warm. Rocking up ten minutes before kick-off and I was stung for €120 for a ticket. I didn’t even get my own toilet roll to throw on the pitch!
These days there’s a smart single line metro which runs from the main station to the ground in just 11 minutes. There’s no five minutes to kick off scrum to get into Italian ground (unless there’s a group of English Football Tourists as there was for this game) – the fans here get in up to an hour before the game, and start their choreographed bouncing around the terraces. That’s the beauty of Italian football – the actual game itself is so often poor, but there’s always so much going on in the stands. Today was no different, with the blue and white wall of fans behind the goal, framed by the majestic hills beyond the ground.
Another surprising feature about watching football in Italy is that you can buy a beer and drink it in your seat without being treated like a criminal. There’s no real queues for the bars – Italy doesn’t really have a beer culture. Create an espresso bar and they’d be queuing around the block. Perhaps that’s why the fans can bounce around the terraces for over two hours straight.
The game itself was a bit rubbish to be honest. The home side took the lead in the 54th minute (Florian Aye if you are really interested), but Ascoli equalised with the last kick/head of the game thanks to Eric Botteghin. The goal led to Brescia’s keeper Luca Lezzerini being red carded for his aggressive remonstrations with the referee over the added time being played.
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