Madness in Cremona where the goalkeeper Audero was hit by a firecracker: the reconstruction of what happened, the investigations and what will happen now on a sporting level.
Let’s start from the end: Emil Audero he won his personal match because, despite the shock of seeing a large firecracker explode a short distance away, he chose to stay on the pitch avoiding consequences that could have also changed the sporting course of the match between Cremonese and Inter. He was lucky, in the sense that the consequences of the crazy gesture of a fan that caused the accident were not serious and he was also extremely correct, given that he could have tried to guarantee a discussion about a possible forfeit victory by asking for a substitution.
The Cremonese goalkeeper was publicly thanked by the Inter president, Beppe Marottaand by the Nerazzurri who had already grasped the gravity of what happened on the pitch. Minute number two of the second half at the Zini stadium, Inter leading 2-0 and in control of the match: a firecracker is thrown behind the Cremonese goalkeeper which grazes Audero and explodes. The goalkeeper remains on the ground stunned and in pain, the match is stopped for 200 seconds and the medical staff of the grey-red team enter. Lautaro Martinez and Chivu himself run towards the Inter corner to scold the fans: what are you doing?
The precedents, from the Napoli scudetto with the coin onwards…
For long moments the memory goes to the past, to the championship decided by the coin of Alemao which rewarded Napoli and which decades later there is still a lot of discussion about, a Tancredi of Roma injured at San Siro by AC Milan’s curve and other similar gestures. Images of a football that seemed buried in the past and which, instead, suddenly became current again on a late winter afternoon in Cremona.
Then Audero gets up and everything starts again. There will be no consequences on the approval of the result, given that the scope of the regulation has become much narrower after some past “abuse” and the 0-3 result has remained an option only for very serious cases of suspension for reasons of public order: Inter, however, have ruined their day and face a very high fine (50,000 euros) with the possibility of having the sector of the curve closed at least for one match which would not be a trivial challenge: Juventus will arrive at San Siro in mid-February. The rest will depend on many factors, but it is a historic moment in which the Interior Ministry has chosen the hard line to repress the new wave of violence around football and the fans of Roma, Fiorentina, Lazio and Naples have paid the price.
The perpetrator of the launch identified: he will be arrested
What few have seen, but which is part of the story, is what happens inside the away section in those excited minutes. It happens that the fan who threw the firecracker was seriously injured while handling a second one: he lost three fingers and was taken to hospital to be treated. He will be arrested because immediate identification effectively allows his arrest. A circumstance which could help Inter to invoke the mitigating circumstance of rapid collaboration with the police, without however allowing it to avoid repercussions.
At the end of the match, president Marotta was extremely nervous: “Insipid gesture, a situation that I have never experienced in many years of my career. Sensational unsportsmanlike gesture, I know that the authorities are carrying out their investigations. It may be an isolated gesture, we are waiting for the investigations but what we think is what all the fans think. We have a duty to create culture and prevent these situations. We condemn this extraordinary gesture, we say thanks to Audero’s professionalism because this match was able to come to the end.”
Inter returned home from Cremona with the three points, but also with a huge problem. Because it is possible, indeed probable, that he lost the support of the warmest part of his fans for a while and that this happened in an already turbulent season due to the effects of the resetting of the curve after the investigation by the Milan Prosecutor’s Office. The Nerazzurri club thought they had turned a corner: the fact that he was a maverick changes little, the reality is that he has to start again from scratch.
