Facts like these kill hockey in Milan

A week has now passed, and no sanctions have been imposed by now. The only move the LIHG (the association of the major Italian ice hockey teams) made is to send a commissioner to the Pala Agorà of Milan, to check if all the security measures are ok.

Despite the gravity of the episode, no official report has been written by now: all is kwown is that, after the match Milano Rossoblu – Egna, some Milan supporters managed to enter in the opposite team’s dressing room willing to beat them. Egna’s coach Rob Wilson has broken his hand, a member of the staff and two players have been hurt during the fight, with these hooligans stealing also an entire bag of hockey sticks. At the moment of the aggression the Palace wasn’t empty but no-one noticed strange noises or movements. The referees where in their dressing room (thus unable to write any official report of what happened) and no police or security staff was present in the dressing room passage or, if it was there, was unable to stop the irruption.

The match was a big one: Egna is currently first in the standings of Italian Serie A2, the second-highest level league in Italy, while Milan follows in second place. According to Milan fans, the episode was caused by some bad referees' decisions that led the game to overtime (and then Egna won it in the shootouts) and by the behavior of some Egna players, who responded the insults from the crowd and threatened some home fans. That said, nobody on the Milan side is trying to justify what happened.

Egna’s vice-captain Simonazzi, in an interview with newspaper La Stampa, stated that the attackers were “thirty, fourty people, with their faces covered with masks”, who “tried to enter the dressing room. Once we got them out, they stayed in front of our door, until police arrived; then they ran away”. In the following days, Egna official accused Milan team and Pala Agorà staff of failing to put in place all of the necessary security measures, and requested Milan team suspension for the remaining of the season. They also stated they will start an ordinary justice procedure.

Few hours after Egna’s official statement, Milan answered saying that “the team has nothing to do with these people (the attackers) and, as a consequence, has no responsibility in what happened since the team put in place all the necessary security measures”. Milan President Ico Migliore, in an interview with La Stampa, stated that the team’s lawyers are already at work to identify the attackers, whose number has now dropped from fourty to five-six people.

In the middle of all this mess, silent stays the LIHG. Without any official report from the referees or from the police, any first-eye witness except Egna players, any CCTV film… The only thing they could do was sending a commissioner to the next Milan home games; and that’s what they did. As a precaution, Milan fans haven’t been allowed to follow the team in the next road game against Caldaro.

Milan should be part of the KHL expansion in the next few years. “Facts like these kill my project – said Migliore – but I won’t give up. People should understand that hockey is not like football or major sports here in Italy. I’m an architect, not a billionaire. I’m the president just for passion. Fortunately, I wasn’t at the Palace on Sunday. Otherwise, I would have had a heart attack”.

 

Advanced player search

Tweets by @eurohockey