One of the things that has been spoken about amid the ongoing investigations into the AC Milan and Inter ultras is the non-violence pact, something that wasn’t always in place.
As La Gazzetta dello Sport write, between the 70s and the beginning of the 80s, clashes raged between Milan and Inter fans until inevitably a supporter died. In the summer of 1983, a meeting at San Siro between the leaders of the two Curvas led to a handshake that would be honoured to this day.
What brought them together was perhaps the least important and heartfelt derby in history, an exhibition game 41 years ago. Before that, there were merciless fights and ambushes, assaults and injuries, ‘clashes in every corner of the city’, as reported by a Curva Sud fanzine found on the ground.
While the players often came to blows on the field, the behaviour inside the stadium was often a lot more measure. It was decided in 1983 that there would be no more violence between Inter and Milan fans, and it was the leaders of the ultras who decided it in one of the very few seasons in which the two teams did not face each other in the league (the Rossoneri had ended up in Serie B the year before).
The 1983 edition of the Mundialito or Super Clubs Cup (an invention of Silvio Berlusconi, with the matches broadcast live on Canale 5) was already in the archives, it was won by Juve. Milan and Inter faced each other on the evening of July 2nd in a game with nothing to play for.
Two years earlier, at the Mundialito summer derby, the brawl between the two sets of fans had been very serious (on several occasions, at different times and in different areas of the stadium, as evidenced by the photographic evidence available).
Inter ultra Vittore Palmieri, just 21 years old, was stabbed in the pancreas, ended up in a coma and died three months later. The newspapers of the time reported the reaction of the boy’s father who, in tears, went to the Inter headquarters to return his season ticket because going to the stadium was simply not possible anymore.
Even before that, the 1970s had witnessed continuous clashes between the two sides of the city, always with no holds barred, always leaving injured people on the ground on both sides. Frightened regular fans ended up in the middle of it all, and there was tension in the air even walking through the streets of the city.
So we return to 41 years ago. Leading Inter ultra Franco ‘Franchino’ Caravita decided to ask for a meeting with Milan, who accepted. Giancarlo Capelli (known better as Il Barone) met him in the Curva Sud and the handshake to end the violence ratified by a subsequent more official meeting between the main representatives of the two Curvas that followed.
Since then the calm has returned, and it is because of that non-belligerence pact that (isolated episodes aside) there have been no more clashes between Rossoneri and Nerazzurri ultras, without any public order problems and without any more deaths.
An important thing to note is that this does not mean that the two groups have stopped violence against other fan groups in Italy and abroad in the following decades. Two examples above all stand out: Nazzareno Filippini was an Ascoli who died after a brawl with Inter ultras in 1988 and Vincenzo Spagnolo from Genoa who was stabbed to death in January 1995 by Milan fans.
Inside the Curva Nord there have been issues too. Vittorio Boiocchi – who had just returned from 26 years in prison and who had taken back the Curva – was killed by another ultra, Andrea Beretta. In the Sud, the arrest (or rather, arrests) of Luca Lucci for drug trafficking.
Now, we have the current investigation after the murder of Bellocco (an Inter ultra) which saw 19 ultras arrested, albeit with different charges. In short, the violence in the two curves certainly did not end with that handshake, but it certainly disappeared at least within the city.
You can read more about the complicated nature of the two ultras groups in our recent Substack bonus article, which dives into the crossed ties, the various schemed the groups use for influence and the internal power struggles.