Spurs Italia: “We’re a family - the Italian Spurs family”
Meet our Official Supporters’ Clubs - Spurs Italia
Sun 19 April 2020, 11:00|
Tottenham Hotspur
Spurs Italia is providing a little relief for Spurs fans during tough times in Italy.
The coronavirus has hit hard in the country, particularly in the Lombardy region - capital, Milan - in the north.
“Unfortunately, the situation here is not very good,” explained Fabrizio Azzoli, chairman of Italia Spurs. “We must stay at home. Everything is still shut. I just hope it’s over soon and we’re back to normality. It’s hard here, but we’re all fighting against the virus.
“I come from a small seaside town near Rome, some members come from Milan, Genoa, Tuscany and Bologna. Thankfully, all of our members are safe. We are all connected on social media, we speak to each other. Maybe once a week we’ll meet on video, just to share a smile. That is fantastic for us - and we thank Spurs for that.”
In a country where, naturally, Serie A rules the footballing roost, Spurs Italia now have approaching 150 members, something Fabrizio and his board are rightly proud of.
Fabrizio told us: “In Italy, Serie A has the power, and people support Inter, Milan, Lazio, Rome, Juventus, many other teams, but we are a group who together, we only support Spurs. Maybe we’ll go to watch matches in Italy, but our hearts are only with Tottenham Hotspur.
“At the moment we have 145 official members, that’s fantastic. We don’t have a pub or anything similar where we can all watch the games because we all come from different parts of Italy, but it’s great to have all Italian supporters under the same flag.
“We organise two meetings every year, one in Italy, one in England. We were all in London for the game against Wolves and our board members had the opportunity to go pitchside at the new stadium. It was brilliant, a special moment.
“In Italy, we organise a meeting in a different city every year, we play football, we watch a Spurs match on TV and we all eat together. Most of our members play football, so we’ll also enjoy playing together.
“It’s difficult to explain. We are more than a group. We are a Spurs family, the Italian Spurs family, even if we meet once, twice or three times a year. We are a big family.”
Think Italy and Spurs and one name immediately springs to mind, and just the mention of his name has Fabrizio singing along... ‘my name is Nicola Berti, I’m aged around 30...'
He smiled: “Nicola Berti - fantastic! Don’t forget Paolo Tramezzani and Carlo Cudicini as well. Okay, Carlo played for Chelsea as well. But Nicola Berti… we all love that song..!"
