Roma fans light fires and wave giant flags last month as they protest a ban on travelling to away games, following the death of a fan at the hands of police. (Gregoria Borgia/Associated Press)

Benito Mussolini, Italy's first and last Fascist dictator, has much to answer for in history. But Il Duce was also a soccer fan who saw the game as a force for national unity. Acting on that intuition, he created the Serie A.

The Serie A is Italy's equivalent of the NHL, the country's top league with its top players. In the 1920s, when Mussolini decreed its creation, it brought together for the first time Italian teams from the rich north and the dirt-poor south.

In the 1930s, Mussolini was behind Italy's lobbying to host, for the first time in Europe, the World Cup. The country duly hosted the tournament in 1934 and won it. Italy won it again in 1938.

For Mussolini, victory in sport was proof of the strength of fascism and the country. For the fans, it was the beginning of a long love affair with "the beautiful game."

This love affair continues with a passion expressed in words that Canadian hockey fans understand.

"There is a national romantic and popular narrative about soccer, just as I think there is about hockey in Canada," says Beppe Severgnini, author, columnist and besotted fan of one of Italy's top teams, Inter Milan.

"And I think that's why people are so in love with sports, because it tells something about their lives. It's a memory about going to the game with their father and their friends and drinking after the match. You know that's what sports are about. And some people want to spoil it."

A spoiled sport

Spoil it? What is he talking about? Well, in the country of Dante, soccer is not so much a Divine Comedy as a human one. There are glimpses of Il Paradiso — the ethereal joy of Italy winning the World Cup in 2006. But there is also l'Inferno — the hell of violence, racism, match-fixing and stadiums ringed by police with fans penned inside like prisoners.

The violence has flared twice in the last year. In February, a policeman was killed after a game in Catania, Sicily, in what amounted to a mini-riot involving so-called ultras, the fanatic supporters that follow their favourite clubs about. In November, a fan was killed by a policeman during a scuffle on a game day. That killing touched off rioting around the country.

The violence is directly linked to the ultras. In what appears to be twisted homage to the great Fascist fan of the 1920s, some ultras unfurl banners with Fascist slogans and symbols at games.

This is because the ultras are a very Italian phenomenon, the remnants of a time when they were not only football fans but the mailed fist of extra-parliamentary political movements, often engaged in street demonstrations and street battles with their political enemies.

The left-wing ultras seem to have faded away. The right-wing variety still clings to the accoutrements of its faith.

To the battlements

These adherents still have the power to create mayhem, which means that an Italian soccer stadium can resemble an armed camp before and after an important match.

Riot police in full gear stand at entrances. They stop and search the swaggering bands of ultras and then direct them to what amount to large cages at the end of the field behind the goals. There they are literally locked in and held until well after the game is over and the other fans have left.

When they are allowed to go, they walk out between a guard of honour: Two rows of riot police in full gear.

In another way of trying to control the violence, the number of tickets issued to ultras is limited, even if that means that stadiums yawn with empty seats at games.

The most notorious of the ultras, those who have already had run-ins with the police, are given stay-away orders and told not to come within several kilometres of a soccer stadium on game days.

But much of this, in the grand Italian tradition, is for show. When the murder of the policeman took place last February, the Italian government shut the game down, decreed draconian measures and said stadiums would remain shut for weeks until everyone learned the lesson.

After one week, the Serie A resumed business as usual.

The show must go on

Ashley Green (despite his name) is an Italian working for a non-profit organization called FARE, which dedicated to reducing violence in soccer and the influence of the ultras. He shrugs in exasperation at the government measures.

"The unspoken message is the show must go on. The soccer authorities say, 'it's really just five or 10 fans, why should you stop the game?'

"Look what happened after the murder in Catania. They said, we'll stop the league for whatever it takes to make the stadiums secure. After one game things went back to normal. That's crazy."

Racism is another ill that is treated with little more than lip service. Black players are regularly greeted with taunts and monkey chants. But when one player, Marco Zoro, born in the Ivory Coast, simply stopped playing in a game one day, saying that the abuse was too crude, his own teammates pleaded with him to carry on. He was overreacting, they said.

A sweet season

The game couldn't just carry on, however, in the wake of charges of match-fixing. The Italian police had overwhelming evidence, gathered from wiretaps, of systematic referee-buying, notably by the league's biggest teams, Juventus of Turin, and AC Milan.

Before one key game, a senior executive of Juventus phoned the referee no fewer than 32 times.

Juventus, at least, paid a price. It was demoted to the B league and fined. The cost in lost revenue was well over $100 million.

The cost to the game is greater. Stadiums are now often half-empty. Attendance in this decade has been falling, sharply.

But not to worry. Television revenues keep the clubs and the players rich. And trophies keep the nation happy. In 2006, Italy won the World Cup. In the spring of 2007, an Italian team, AC Milan, won the European club championship.

One of the mainstays of the Italian national team is Marco Materazzi, the man who goaded Zinedine Zidane into the notorious head-butt that saw the French star thrown out of the 2006 World Cup final.

Materazzi's view is that crises in the game are simply there to spur everyone on to greater heights. It may be Italian characteristic.

"We're not the most patriotic of people," he says. "But when confronted with difficult situations, we're a people — inside and out — who know what we want and can achieve anything. That is what we did in the World Cup."

Seven centuries ago, the Italian poet Dante travelled in his mind to an inferno of flames where the sun was silent. Like a prophet of an unknown future he glimpsed what he called "a sweet season."

Now, in their own circle of toil, millionaire players boot a ball, watched by even richer owners and by serried ranks of believers who are condemned to cheer their triumphs and forgive their scandals.

The game may be the country in miniature. Italy and its favourite sport, in their own sweet season in hell.