With Napoli just one point behind Milan in the intensely contested top four spots, it's not news when players or teams might want to use every sporting advantage. However, in Italy, the Scudetto or even Champions League spots are not always won on the pitch. And I'm not just talking about the profoundly biased refereeing that has consistently and statistically given one team clear advantages for years now. This time, I'm talking about cities using their political power to give their teams bigger home advantages by overcharging, restricting, or even banning traveling fans without real cause. We saw it last year with Bologna, both in the league and in the Coppa Italia Final, and then again in a crucial match in Roma. Now, Napoli have banned Milan's traveling fans without citing an actual reason in a match that could determine a Champions League spot, which is worth bare minimum €50 million just for qualifying. It is blatant matchfixing without any recourse for Milan or its fans. Once again, it's politics over sport.
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| Dedicating this to our Curva, who are being blocked from supporting Milan by politics. |
There were reports about ten days ago that Napoli Police had made a report regarding safety for this match. That was then referred to the CASMS, the Committee for the Analysis of the Safety of Sporting Events and the Napoli Prefecture. Without citing who or what the "threat to public safety and order" was, the Napoli Prefecture banned the sale of away tickets to Milan fans who reside in the Lombardy region (the area Milano is located in.)
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| Maybe they are just threatened by our REAL star player, especially after his goal for Serbia. |
Not only have Milan fans traveled to Napoli for decades without any issues, the last issue I can remember regarding violence with any Milan fans at or near a Serie match was in 2019, when two Milan fans were fighting over a pair of shorts our own players had thrown into the crowd at Bologna. Yet just a year before that, a Napoli supporter with mafia ties and a criminal record killed an Inter supporter in a violent clash.
Milan fans don't pose a "threat to public safety and order," but Napoli fans consistently do. So maybe the threat was keeping fans from Lombardy safe from Napoli fans? Meaning Milan and its fans would be punished not only because of Napoli's thug fans (again,) but also by their incompetent police force, who apparently cannot control their own fans' threat?
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| The Leão vs. 7 meme was nothing compared to blocking ALL fans from Milano. |
The Napoli threat has unfortunately become predictable and impervious to any punishments. They are once again serving a travel ban for the rest of this season after their fans openly and violently fought on the highway at the end of January, this time with Lazio fans. Last season, they fought violently with Cagliari supporters during a match, causing the match to be suspended for seven minutes, and were subsequently banned from traveling to their big match with Juve. Then there was the two-month travel ban in January of 2023 for fighting on the highway with Roma supporters as the teams traveled to respective matches. This was during their Scudetto-winning season.
You may remember everything their horrific fans did to Milan players and fans that season: They threw lighters, cups of urine, and spit on our fans at the San Siro. Some of their fans online sent death threats to Theo Hernández and his one year-old son, following it up by chanting against him and also racially abusing Leão in Naples. They even sang that Paolo Maldini was a "Uomo di me**a" (man of sh*t,) while their own god hero/stadium's namesake was banned for his abuse of cocaine and evaded taxes. And Milan fans did not retaliate, despite all of this horrific behavior. Yet these are the kinds of people who are claiming our fans pose some kind of public safety risk.
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| These angelic fans are welcome, but Milan fans, with no stadium bans or violence, are not. Got it. |
In fact, Napoli could not even celebrate their first Scudetto in 33 years without over 200 injuries, including gunshot wounds and even a death, which this very suspect Napoli Prefecture claim was unrelated to the celebrations and even deny the injury claims. (In contrast, more than a million Milan fans took to the streets to celebrate our Scudetto win the prior year, with zero reported injuries and no deaths.) But Milan fans with no history of violence in all of their travels to Napoli for decades are suddenly a "threat to public safety and order?" Make it make sense. Marotta is not the only one throwing his political weight around to try to give his team an unfair advantage.
Napoli do not need a bigger advantage. Their stadium is notoriously challenging to win at already, and in the Conte vs. Allegri head-to-head, Milan's win over Napoli in September finally earned Allegri his second win in ten matches, Conte still has six wins after Napoli's victory over Milan in the Supercoppa semifinal in Saudi Arabia in December. Napoli have won their last four matches in a row, whereas Milan, having gone unbeaten in the league since their first match of the season, were handed two losses in their last five matches. Napoli don't need to cheat to have an advantage on Monday.
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| Conte is well ahead of Allegri in their head-to-head matchups. |
Their last match was a 1-0 win over Cagliari ahead of the break. For that match, Conte lined up a 3-4-2-1 with Vanja Milinković-Savić; Beukema, Buongiorno, Olivera; Politano, Gilmour, Lobotka, Gutiérrez; De Bruyne, McTominay; and Højlund. Having recently recovered players like De Bruyne and McTominay helps Napoli plenty, however Conte is reportedly missing Rrahmani, Di Lorenzo, Neres, and Vergara to injury, and Lukaku is either injured, receiving treatment, being punished for said actions, or maybe he had some voodoo sh*t to deal with or didn't want to face Ibrahimović, even as a director. Whichever the case is, he is unlikely to be available Monday to face Milan.
With the return of Santi Gimenez, Leão receiving treatment in Portugal over the break, and Loftus-Cheek available to play with some kind of protective mask, Allegri is only missing Gabbia. Which may sound much better than Napoli's available squad, until you remember that Milan only has 23 players total in our squad this season, one of which is a goalkeeper who mainly plays for Milan Futuro, so really 22. Gabbia's unavailability should give our two teams the same number of available first team players.
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| Milan's defenders put their bodies on the line vs. Napoli. |
There is a lot of speculation about who Allegri will start up front. Leão is one of our best players, but only just returned (again) from a problem that has been hampering him all season. Pulisic has been struggling more psychologically, and just traveled back from the U.S. As did Modrić, Maignan, Rabiot, Saelemaekers, and De Winter, all of whom played friendlies here ahead of the World Cup this summer. That's a lot of travel-weary players to manage, but Gimenez, Füllkrug and Nkunku all stayed at Milanello and trained, so he may gamble on one or more of them to start just for fresh legs.
But at the end of the day, will his choices even matter? Milan's Ultras always sing from start to finish, often eclipsing the home fans in volume and intensity, particularly by the end of matches. Yet Napoli's Prefecture have stolen that previously hallowed tradition, one that is even regulated by Serie A rules. Rules violated by Cagliari this year, who only made about half of the minimum requirement of away tickets available, at around twice the cost of the home seats. No punishment for them, of course, and our club obviously neither said nor did nothing about it, either.
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| Fans just want to see epic matchups like this, why do corrupt politicians prevent them? |
Milan are not alone in Napoli's political matchfixing. They have also banned Atalanta fans like this, despite no violence, having at other times claimed that Atalanta's relationship with Eintracht Frankfurt fans was responsible (or actual fans involved) in very violent clashes between Napoli and Eintracht. The common denominator in all of this violence being Napoli fans and the incompetent police force of Naples, and the common fans being banned are all from the Lombardy region, with no recent history of violence.
Milan fans, unable to do anything else, and with a club management as unwilling to do anything about any of this as they are politically impotent and functionally incompetent, rallied the troops at training on Saturday to support the team at Milanello since they are unable to travel. Seeing the love and passion for our team echoes the love in the hearts of hundreds of millions of fans worldwide, who still support our club in good times and in bad. Even when corrupt clubs and cities choose politics over sport.
This post inspired by the music of Garbage's "Sisyphus"