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T-shirt causes uproar in Italy GK draws praise from Benito Mussolini's granddaughter
Posted: Wednesday September 29, 1999 03:43 PM
ROME (Reuters) -- Perhaps only in soccer-mad Italy could a goalkeeper's blunder stymie parliament for a day and revive the ghosts of the country's Fascist past under dictator Benito Mussolini. But that's what has happened -- all because of national team and Parma goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon. After struggling Parma lost a second straight match on Sunday, Buffon appeared for a television interview with a right-wing slogan on his jersey which, roughly translated, meant: "Death to him who gives up." Buffon, who later said he had no idea that the slogan was a rallying cry for a 1970 right-wing riot in the southern city of Reggio Calabria, had merely sought to encourage his embattled teammates. "I don't know anything about politics," he said. But by the time the lower house of parliament gathered on Tuesday, Buffon's gesture had become a national political issue, provoking the ire of Interior Minister Rosa Russo Jervolino and the praise of Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of "Il Duce." "It was truly a spectacle which we would have preferred not to see," Milan's Corriere della Sera daily said in a front page editorial on Wednesday. Mussolini, a deputy for the far-right National Alliance party, caused uproar in the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday when she appeared wearing a T-shirt on which was written: "Death to him who gives up on Buffon." Chamber President Carlo Giovanardi repeatedly invited her to cover up her shirt, but Mussolini declined, sparking a boisterous row between deputies on the left and the right. Giovanardi was twice forced to suspend the session. "This is a not a sports bar," Giovanardi told the deputies. "I'm ashamed of this parliament." Mussolini said the slogan was a response to Jervolino who had publicly criticized Buffon for his "distasteful gesture." Mussolini's party whip Gustavo Selva said they would consider reprimanding her. "I consider this to be ridiculous behavior which has nothing to do with being a parliamentarian. Mussolini was just trying to score a point with the publicity," he said. Newspapers have blasted right-wing slogans at stadiums, and Lazio chairman Sergio Cragnotti recently asked fans to be more respectful.
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