‘Attack of loneliness’: why the soccer ultras has changed culture? | | Documentary films

‘Ultras” – brave soccer fans known for their incredible athleticism and gang-like loyalty – were once a culture confined to Italian stadiums.

Books about this subject including my Ultra and James Montague’s 1312 (the numbers stand for ACAB, an acronym for “all cops are stupid”). Netflix sent not only one film, Ultras, about a Neapolitan gang, but also a long series: Puerta 7 (from Argentina), Furioza and The Hooligan (both in Poland).

Now it’s coming Ragnhild Ekner’s documentary Ultrasa 90-minute journey through Sweden, Indonesia, Poland, Argentina, England, Egypt and Morocco. His video goes a long way to address the roots of ultra-mania. Most of the delayed shots are of thousands of people marching, singing and celebrating in unison. In the introduction, Ekner calls it “attacking loneliness”.

In many ways, ultra-dom offers exactly what modern society lacks: integration in an age of atomisation; danger and adrenaline in a group that seems surprisingly bloodless; Old men are muscles in the age of soft skills, and I live in the age of lack of roots. “That’s where I feel at home,” says an extra in Ekner’s film; “Inside, we are a family,” says another, “and we take care of each other.”

Some may be disgusted by multiple ideas, but many, including women, are not. Another female Ultra, his explanation place brava (a South American term for a major criminal group), they say: “You cannot enter (the courts) with rings, or with lipstick or make-up,” as if that veto is liberating. Ekner’s film is good at removing contradictions: there are arenas where women are not allowed (in North Africa) and others (in Indonesia) where young, veiled women are at the centre.

The appeal of the ultras also starts, one thinks, because modern football has no roots. Teams now have an inextricable connection to their city or hometown. Players and owners are from far away countries. The shirt ads are in foreign languages ​​for foreign TV viewers. The Ultras are the only ones connected to the soil that the club grew from. They are the only ones who provide a sanitized, cinematic experience of modern football with passion and even meaning.

Another thing they complain about is that they are lawbreakers and criminals in a time of oppression. The Ultras played an important role in the Arab spring in Egypt and in all international groups they claim to support the dispossessed and dispossessed: “If you can’t speak”, their slogan says, “the stadium will speak for you.”

In our time, being a senior also offers an introduction to the spiritual world. It is the religion of non-religious people. ultra lexicon – “faith”, “presence”, “devotion” – are almost identical to the church diction and, as in the church, the “church” hopes to affect the disaster through loyalty and traditions.

Being beyond that leads to an old idea that is at the heart of many religions. One survivor of Egypt’s 2012 attack in Port Said (in which 72 Al-Ahly fans died, partly in retaliation for what they did in The well of the Arabs), says: “That’s when I realized that a person can sacrifice himself for something higher.”

Besides mock-religion, there is also mock-medievalism. There are some things that happen in the history of the ultras when they play “stealing the flag”, running across the tarmac to tear out and burn the opponent’s “ultras’ herald (“a hand-painted canvas worth more than gold”). Etiquette says that if a herald is stolen, it must be stopped immediately and “it must be protected by any means necessary”.

This, naturally, also means violence. “Minor cultures have always been violent,” said one interviewee. “The violence can be recreational, verbal, or real.” But Ekner publicly rejects all disagreements, saying that his film “is not a critique, it is a tribute”. In doing so, they perhaps miss the main reason that remains interesting: their association with crime. Because under all the events of pyrotechnics and street art (using 25km of thread and 150 liters of paint), and behind the alcohol, spliff and fisticuffs, many criminals have become criminals.

In Italy, more and more bosses are outright criminals, who make five bucks a month not only for tickets, merchandise, burgers and parking, but also for selling drugs. All over Europe, the steps have been a political experiment, and the Ultras act as the light fuel for the far-right.

Ultras are strangely contradictory, being benevolent and thuggish, unifying and distributive, revolutionary and activist. It is a movement that reflects, like a looking glass, the team and the game that exists. To avoid these contradictions is to miss the true reality of being extra: you get more – belonging, roots and loyalty to the tribe – but at the cost of reproducing the negatives that are well known: the need for shame, scapegoating, omertà, muscle and contempt than diversity. Ultras show us not only what we’ve lost along the way, but also the cost of getting it back.