Stones against the bus of Pistoia fans after the basketball match, the driver loses his life: don’t call it cheering, it’s barbaric

There are episodes that cannot be called fans, because they don’t even have a shadow of sport. In fact, after the Serie A2 basketball match between Sebastiani Rieti and Estra Pistoia, the bus of Tuscan fans was the victim of a ferocious ambush. A group of individuals armed with stones and bricks hit the moving bus along the Rieti-Terni road, near Contigliano. One of the bricks smashed through the windshield, killing a 65-year-old driver who was ready to retire.

The match had recently ended, the tensions in the stands seemed to have subsided, but outside the arena an act of blind violence took place, devoid of any logic. The police had escorted the bus to the junction, but the attackers followed it for kilometres, demonstrating premeditation that had nothing to do with the spontaneity of the cheering.

The pain and bewilderment of the sporting world

While investigators are working to identify those responsible, the world of sport and institutions are wondering how it was possible to die like this. Sports Minister Andrea Abodi spoke of a “criminal act, light years away from sporting values“Words that photograph the abysmal distance between real sport and this tribal drift.

Pistoia Basket 2000 said it was “shocked and saddened“, while Sebastiani Rieti expressed “condolences and total condemnation” and preferred to withdraw with press blackout. The mayors of the two cities used terms such as “shocking” And “despicable”: weak words, perhaps, in the face of such an inhuman gesture.

Let’s call things by their name: it’s crime

Cheering is passion, identity, comparison. Here, however, we are faced with faceless barbarism, where the boundary between sport and hate has shattered together with the windscreen of a bus. The death of a man, guilty only of doing his job, is a blow to the heart of sporting civilization.

This is not a rivalry, it is not even stadium madness: it is pure crime, disguised as belonging. And as long as violence finds space around and outside a playing field, no result, no victory will make sense to be called this way.

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