‘He liked that people were scared of him’: my year unpicking fantasy and reality with a veteran of Italy’s football ultras

What happened

According to The Guardian’s source item, ‘He liked that people were scared of him’: my year unpicking fantasy and reality with a veteran of Italy’s football ultras, I’ve met many hardcore, violent fans, but the hostage-negotiating, cocaine-smuggling, Marxist-Leninist Alessandro Casolari still stood out I had heard the name Alessandro Casolari on and off for years. From 2016 onwards, when I was researching my book on Italy’s ultras – a cross between English football hooligans and Hells Angels – the nickname “Caso” kept coming up. In the late 80s and early 90s, he had led the ultras in Ferrara, whose football club is known as Spal. A red-brick city in northern Italy between Bologna and Venice, Ferrara has always felt sidelined, languishing in a marshy land of fog and floods. I used to go there quite often, drawn by its festivals and famous writers and film directors. A few years ago, when I started writing another book, about the Po River, I hung out there again, but I never bumped into Caso. Continue reading…

Context

The development sits in VINI’s Global file for readers following international affairs, institutions, conflict, diplomacy, economics, and cross-border consequences. The original report is linked so readers can check the source account, follow later updates, and compare new coverage against the first published record. The source item is dated 2026-06-16T04:00:45+00:00.

What to watch

Open questions include whether primary sources issue follow-up statements, whether local or market impacts become clearer, and whether additional reporting changes the timeline or adds material context.

Source

Primary source: ‘He liked that people were scared of him’: my year unpicking fantasy and reality with a veteran of Italy’s football ultras via The Guardian. VINI cites and links the source; it does not reproduce the publisher’s full article text without rights clearance.