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Easter, and what better thing to do than visit Naples? Pompeii, Herculaneum, Vesuvius….and the San Paulo, Maradona’s spiritual home in Italy, a stadium which once held 87,500 and must have been bouncing back in the day. What a place it must have been with Maradona and Careca pulling the strings nearly 30 years ago. As it is, the San Paulo now holds 60,000, despite the front few rows and back few rows being taken out of service. (I suspect the former for advertising hoardings and the the latter through reasons of safety. Like many Italian stadia, it’s starting to show it’s age). And despite the athletics track, it’s probably a decent view for most, as the majority of seats are in the upper tier, unlike, say, the ‘London Stadium’ (I hate that name) which is all one tier. So obviously I sat downstairs…
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| The Napoli ultras. |
Buying a match ticket was easy enough. The ticket office at Galleria Umberto I in the city centre sells tickets (take your passport!). €15 or €27? I looked at a stadium plan and thought, yeah, those cheap tickets look alright. I thought I was by the side of the pitch, but it turned out I was in the corner. Not a great view, but as there were several empty seats around, it meant I could have the pick. To my right, in the upper tier, was Napoli’s main ultra support (and they never stopped), but the rest of the stadium looked busy too, by Italian standards.
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| The ubiquitous perspex screens. |
Being Easter, the game was on the Saturday, and, just for telly, it was a 8:30pm kick off. No problem - I caught a Line 2 train from Museo straight to Campi Flegrei and headed towards the beam of the floodlights. Little did I know, there would be no trains back; the service had stopped for the evening. I should have known…
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| Graffiti under the stands. But why Vicenza? |
Napoli, comfortable in 3rd, were facing midtable Udinese and the match itself showed all the hallmarks of this. Napoli cantered to victory with three second half goals and, even better, they were all at my end. So my penny-pinching ways hadn’t all gone to waste. A couple of minutes into the second half, a throughball was played through for Mertens to latch onto and finish superbly. Then a pass hit a defender, who, on failing to react, had the ball taken off him and hit home by Allan (I wondered why ther crowd were chanting my name!) before Callejon scored a late 3rd, hitting home a second rebound as Udinese were swamped. Job done, it was time to leave.
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| Fans salute the players on their lap of honour. |
Outside the stadium, I perused the souvenir stands and couldn’t resist a Maradona t-shirt. It’s like they know they will never reach those heady heights again. Then a kebab and large beer, ready for my journey home. But no, the train station was shut and surrounded by police. I presumed they were preventing trouble, but no, the last train had gone. Bugger. Apparently, I could get a bus into town (it was a 7km walk) but after standing around for 20 minutes with a few hundred I thought ‘f*** it, I’ll walk’. There followed a one mile tunnel in jammed up traffic and by the time I reached the other end, only one bus had overtaken me. But having prepared myself for a dismal walk through the Naples suburbs, the tunnel brought me out near the promenade, so I could walk around the bay where there were still plenty of youth hanging out and couples having a romantic walk. So aside from the choking fumes in the tunnel, quite a pleasant traipse back (if that isn’t an oxymoron).
The Damage:
€15 ent
€10 t-shirt
= €25 (£21)
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| Sao Paulo panorama |
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| The queue to get in. |
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| The view from the corner. |
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| The Main Stand (as much as there is one) |
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| Scores on the doors. |
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| The ghost of Diego lives on. |
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| The neatest club shop display ever. |
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| The clue is in the name. |
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| The view from the far corner. |
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| Anti-invasion tank trap. |
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| Back of the bottom tier. |
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| The cameramen line up. |
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| Looking toward the ultras. |
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| I'm not sure what this is trying to say. |
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| Curva A. |
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| Sao Paulo full time panorama. |
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| The 'other' end at full time. |
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