Half a world away: Why Serie A football in Australia reveals faultline in ultras culture | OneFootball

The attempt to play Milan vs. Como in Australia only adds to the growing sense of disconnect between Serie A fans and clubs, warns Susy Campanale, but some ultras culture is increasingly toxic.

San Siro will be taken over by the opening ceremony for the Milano-Cortina 2026 games, forcing Milan to play their Serie A home fixture against Como elsewhere. This is an unavoidable fact. However, choosing to therefore play it literally halfway around the world is making an absolute mockery of the sport, above all setting a dangerous precedent if this is given the all-clear.

epa11671978 Inter’s supporters during the Italian Serie A soccer match AS Roma vs FC Inter at Olimpico stadium in Rome, Italy, 20 October 2024. EPA-EFE/ANGELO CARCONI

Now I am not one of those who insist you must support the team whose stadium is closest to where you were born, I realise club loyalty can be based on so many different elements, especially when writing for an English-language website on Italian football.

Our passion is usually captured in childhood, and we never get over that first flush of joy when falling in love with a team, even if we’re stuck with them for life while they go through a myriad of terrible decisions and woeful campaigns. Being a fan means sticking with them through thick and thin, less like marriage, more a sibling that you’re stuck with for life. It makes you feel like fellow supporters are family.

Having said all that, moving the Serie A game so far across the globe does feel like you are family being given the worst table at the wedding reception. It’s another sign of football becoming more business than sport, where the priority is not rewarding the loyalty of existing fans, but chasing down new clients to sign up and make the spreadsheets look good. Growth, that’s the word everyone is chasing nowadays, as if such a thing can be infinite in any arena. It is enough to make you feel rather taken for granted.

Serie A needs to grow, but is moving abroad the only way?

MILAN, ITALY – MARCH 15: Christian Pulisic of AC Milan is challenged by Gabriel Strefezza and Lucas Da Cunha of Como during the Serie A match between AC Milan and Como at Stadio Giuseppe Meazza on March 15, 2025 in Milan, Italy. (Photo by Marco Luzzani/Getty Images)

We all want Italian football to grow, especially those of us who remember how popular and exciting it was in the 1990s. Of course, that’s because at the time it was the richest tournament in Europe, a role now taken over to a ridiculous degree by the Premier League. The figures we saw bandied about on the transfer market this summer were a stark reminder of the economic gap between the real European Super League and everyone else.

A lot of that success was thanks to their reaching out across different continents to plug the untapped market, especially in Asia and North America. Australia is a fairly recent territory to be targeted for football, and with so many of Italian origin out there, it makes perfect sense for Serie A to aim Down Under.

Milan already played pre-season friendlies in Perth to roaring success in the stands, but those were games nobody really cared about, pure money-making exercises. Do we really want to be using crucial Serie A matches as fundraisers? What if this does well, and they suggest playing a bigger fixture than Milan vs. Como abroad, forcing the regular season ticket holders to miss out?

TURIN, ITALY – DECEMBER 14: Juventus players acknowledge the fans at the end of the Serie A match between Juventus and Venezia at Allianz Stadium on December 14, 2024 in Turin, Italy. (Photo by Valerio Pennicino/Getty Images)

At the same time, this is not a one-way issue at all. Every week we see more long-winded and pompous statements from the ultras groups announcing another boycott, warning the sport would die without them, and they ought to have the freedom to do whatever they want in the stands. The investigation into the Milan and Inter ultras showed just how toxic these relationships can get, as the fans can get more and more demanding, even threatening.

Much as they do bring fantastic colour and vibrancy to the stadiums, they are also by no means the only Serie A supporters, and regularly try to bully families with children who have the temerity to cheer their team rather than just hurl insults at the opposition.

Recently when the Inter ultras staged a silent protest at San Siro, the rest of the crowd joined in a chant to mock them. We’ve seen the toxicity of that style of fandom spreading throughout football, with racist abuse on the rise both in stadiums and especially on social media. This is a sport, when did it become normal to send death threats over a game?

So while moving Serie A matches abroad would overall be a terrible idea in my view, we also need to encourage more families to go to the stadium and simply enjoy themselves. If playing in Perth can give us an idea what that might look like in modern arenas, perhaps it can have some positives too. I just wish teams didn’t have to go halfway across the world to do it.