I may have mentioned this before, but Lazio is the region in which Rome is located, so basically, it's a rivalry along the lines of Georgia-Georgia Tech or Georgia-Florida football. The only difference is that die-hard Roma and Lazio fans are even crazier that American football fans, which I never really thought possible.
We arrived at the Stadio Olimpico (the 70,000+ seat arena which was the site of the 1960 Olympics) around 6:10 pm for the game, which was to start at 6:30. It was eerily quiet and empty walking up to the stadium, but when we got there, it was apparent that most people were already in the stadium, cheering, chanting, and singing their Italian "fight" songs. When we got in the stadium, there was a very clear divide between the maroon of Roma and the light blue of Lazio, and at midfield was the press area on one side and a completely empty section on the other side. We were informed that that is sort of the "no-man's land" where people only buy tickets to fight with the opposing team's fans, and sure enough, we were not disappointed. A few minutes before the game started, people began rushing into that section and quickly started throwing punches, but they were pretty quickly subdued by the security. The section remained empty the rest of the game--kind of a waste of the best seats, if you ask me. (We were quite far from this section, so there was no real danger for us.)
When we got to our seats, we realized that there were already people sitting in them, but they made room for us. An English speaking Italian behind us informed us that the guy in our seat HAD to stay there because he sat there all season and Roma hadn't lost a game yet, so Claire, Huaxia and I squeezed into two seats for the first half. Lazio scored pretty quickly into the game, so our section was pretty subdued for the rest of the first half. During halftime, Huaxia got up to take some pictures and decided to just sit in the aisle for the start of the second half. Roma quickly came back, scoring two goals on penalty kicks, and our section instantly came alive. The chanting, which as far as we could tell was led by a few random gesturing people at the bottom of the stands rather than by loudspeakers or a band, became even louder, and after each goal, there was a lot of jumping and thrashing around. At one point, Huaxia came back to sit with us, and a few things happened. Previously, Claire and I were sitting with Huaxia between us, since she was the smallest. When she came back though, Huaxia sat to one side of us. Immediately, the guy behind us told her that she HAD to sit in the middle because we couldn't just change seats around like that. Huaxia returned to the middle seat, at which point the couple back on the aisle started objecting. Huaxia couldn't back with us because Roma didn't score at all while she was sitting there in the first half but they scored twice while she was sitting in the aisle, so she HAD to move back to the aisle. Huaxia agreed, reluctantly, and she returned to the aisle with a hero's welcome and offers for free beer and snacks.
The game ended without Lazio scoring again, so, of course, the Roma section went wild, and we were informed that we HAVE to come back next Sunday and sit with them again. We didn't have the heart to tell them we'd be finishing up our work in studio, and that they'd just have to go on without us. I certainly hope Roma wins again though.
