James Richardson was this week's guest on the Football Show. Across a thirty-minute chat, AC Jimbo covered lots, including the success of Football Weekly with the Guardian, the Art of the Pun, the legacy of Totti, his one regret from Football Italia, his love of Baggio, and what's on his bookshelf. You can listen to by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes, or your Android podcast app. For the latter, just search 'Balls.ie Football Show' on your podcast app, click subscribe, and allow us fill your ears. Alternatively, you can listen to us below.
During the course of his interview, Richardson recalled a pretty terrifying memory from his days presenting Football Italia. In the event you sent the nineties under a rock (or unborn), Richardson anchored the phenomenally successful show on Channel 4, consisting of Gazzetta Football Italia on a Saturday (a highlights show, introduced by Richardson sitting in an Italian coffee shop accompanied by ice-cream and a stack of newspapers) along with a live Serie A game on a Sunday evening, presented live from within the stadium.
While on the topic of Football Italia, conversation meandered onto to a frankly terrifying incident after a live broadcast of a Serie A game between Genoa and AC Milan in 1995. Violence between both sets of supporters marred the build-up to the game, with a 25-year-old Genoa fan, Vincenzo Spagnolo stabbed and killed by a group of Milan fans ahead of the game. This caused incidents within the stadium, and the game was suspended at halftime as chants of "Murderers!" rang throughout the stadium. Violence then erupted outside of the ground, with a New York Times report of the time claiming that fans then destroyed buses, smashed windows, burned cars, and threw rocks at police, who responded in turn with tear gas.
Richardson was broadcasting live from within the stadium, but became caught up in the violence after the game. Let AC Jimbo take it from here...
The game was suspended, but we just stayed in the stadium, as Channel 4 had a live slot to fill so they went to another game, and we would wrap from the stadium at the end.
Once that happened, we went outside of the staiudm, where there was a major confrontation going on. The Genoa fans wanted some kind of retribution from the Milan fans. I naively said, 'Oh, I'm sure that we'll be covering this on next week's show', so I sent a camera man into get some footage. Why I did this, and why I didnt wait to get some footage off the news channels, I'm not sure. But anyway, our camera man went in to capture some footage. I was aware that the fans were unlikely to welcome any publicity for what they were doing, so I did tell the camera man 'Just film over their shoulders, or by the police'.
But the camera man was quite an artistic fellow, so having got one or two angles, he said, 'I think I can get another shot from over there, and so on'. He then disappeared out of sight, and five minutes later he returned walking extremely briskly, with a growing crowd of people walking even more briskly behind him. So just at the point he got to me, they caught up and knocked the camera off his shoulder.
At that point he and the sound man jumped into the car that I'm standing at, and drive off. At this point I feel a wallop, and I turn around to see this big guy looming in my face, saying 'Where's the tape? Where's the tape?. At which point I motion toward the car, which is speeding toward the quickest route out of there. So there was a ring of Genoa fans around me, who were extremely angry.
The funny things was that, at this point, I put on my best doe-eyed, 'I didn't do my homework' face, and said 'No, no, no, I'm English' and immediately the entire situation changed entirely. All of a sudden they were saying, 'Oh my God, we're sorry, we have to get you out of here'. So one of the ultras was delegated to accompany me out of what was by now a little bit of a war zone. He made polite small talk about Genoa as he walked me away, put me in a taxi, and off I went.
Surreal.
Listen to the full interview on the podcast.
