I'm writing this from my wheelchair, hands still trembling—not from my physical condition, but from what I witnessed unfold in Udine. Here's what some people believe: that violence is justified when passion runs high, that sport deserves to be a battleground for our angers, that throwing barriers at police officers somehow advances any cause worth advancing. I'm here to tell you they're catastrophically wrong.
Let me share what actually happened, stripped of ideology and reduced to its brutal essence: A journalist left the streets with serious head trauma. Police officers faced barrages of bottles, torn-up street signs, and manhole covers . Tear gas filled the air where families should've been walking safely. And somewhere in all that chaos, a football match was supposed to happen.
This isn't about politics. This is about forgetting who we are.
The Night Violence Hijacked Sport
The sound of shattering glass echoed through Udine's streets as approximately 10,000 protesters gathered I can almost smell the acrid sting of tear gas mixing with autumn air, hear the metallic clang of barriers being weaponized against armored vehicles. Some protesters lifted transennes—those heavy metal barriers—and hurled them at police vehicles. Others ripped grondaie from buildings, transforming gutters into projectiles questore of Udine, Pasquale Antonio de Lorenzo, had to order "alleggerimento charges" just to regain control of the piazza. Translation: They had to physically push back roughly one hundred people who'd decided that violence was their preferred language that night .
Inside the stadium? Less than 10,000 people showed up to watch their national team—officially listed as 9,965 tickets, though the actual attendance looked closer to half that. The Israeli national anthem was drowned in whistles and jeers, though a few brave souls in the central tribune tried to applaud When Italy's anthem played, everyone sang. The contrast wasn't subtle.
What We Lose When Fists Replace Words
Here's what kills me about this whole situation: Minister Luca Ciriani said something profoundly simple before the match. "Politics should remain outside these occasions," he noted, pointing out that a peace agreement had just been signed and this match could've been "the beginning of a path of hope and reconciliation" Reconciliation. Those words sound almost quaint now, don't they?
Instead, we got a journalist with "un trauma cranico importante"—significant head trauma—rushed to the hospital We got riot police in full antisommossa gear wielding batons and shields. We got helicopters circling overhead tracking movement patterns like this was a warzone rather than a sporting event
I've spent years explaining complex astrophysical principles to everyday people here at FreeAstroScience, breaking down how the universe works in ways anyone can grasp. But I can't make sense of this. The physics of a thrown barrier connecting with a human skull? That's simple kinetic energy. The psychology of choosing violence over peaceful assembly? That's chaos theory I'll never fully understand.
Sport: The Last Sacred Space
You know what gets me? Really gets under my skin? Sport is supposed to be the one place where we can disagree about everything else and still share the same space. The football pitch doesn't care about your ideology. The ball doesn't curve differently based on your political affiliation. When that whistle blows, we're all just humans watching other humans test the limits of what's physically possible.
The Israeli national team arrived at the stadium with a "nutrito numero" of police vehicles and a helicopter escort for the entire journey Think about that. These are athletes—people who've trained their entire lives to be excellent at kicking a sphere into a net—and they needed military-level security just to play a game.
Meanwhile, every vehicle entering the stadium, including those carrying FIGC officials, had to drive over special platforms that check for explosives Metal detectors scrutinized every single person. Snipers, drones, and bomb-sniffing dogs turned a football stadium into a fortress is what violence does. It doesn't solve problems—it metastasizes them.
The Hundred Who Ruined It for Ten Thousand
Here's the thing that really twists the knife: Most of those 10,000 protesters were peaceful. The service d'ordine—the protest's own security team—actually kicked out a small group of black bloc troublemakers, and the crowd applauded when they left That tells you everything you need to know. Even within the protest itself, people recognized that violence wasn't the answer.
But it only took about a hundred people to turn demonstration into warfare . A hundred people out of ten thousand. That's one percent. One percent decided that barriers and bottles were more persuasive than words and peaceful assembly.
Violence is a virus. It spreads faster than reason and infects everyone it touches. Those police officers who had to respond with water cannons and tear gas? They didn't go to work that day hoping to do that. That journalist who got hit? He was just trying to document what was happening. The athletes inside the stadium? They were just trying to play the game they love.
What I'm Actually Saying Here
I'm not naive. I know there are causes worth fighting for, injustices that demand our loudest voices, situations that make our blood boil with righteous anger. I get it. I live in a wheelchair because of circumstances I didn't choose, and I've felt helpless rage at systems that don't accommodate human dignity. So believe me when I say I understand passion.
But throwing a barrier at a police vehicle doesn't make your cause more just. Injuring a journalist doesn't strengthen your argument. Turning a football match into a combat zone doesn't advance peace anywhere on this planet.
Sport exists in part because we recognized millennia ago that humans need structured ways to channel competition that don't involve actual bloodshed. We invented rules and referees and penalties precisely so we could test ourselves against each other without killing anyone. When we bring violence to sport, we're regressing to our basest instincts—the ones we've spent centuries trying to evolve beyond.
Minister Ciriani mentioned that a peace agreement had just been signed I don't know the details, and honestly, for this piece, they don't matter. What matters is that humans somewhere had chosen dialogue over destruction. And on that same day, in that same world, other humans chose the exact opposite.
The Takeaway Nobody Wants to Hear
Violence is the enemy of sport because violence is the enemy of everything that makes us human. It's the enemy of conversation, of understanding, of the possibility that maybe—just maybe—we can find common ground. When you pick up a barrier to throw at another human being, you're declaring that you've given up on every other option.
And here's the uncomfortable truth: It doesn't matter how righteous your cause is. It doesn't matter how deeply you feel about the issue. Violence against people who aren't actively trying to harm you is indefensible. Full stop. No asterisks, no caveats, no "but what about..."
Those officers in riot gear weren't there because they love authoritarianism. They were there because someone had to maintain enough order that a football match could happen. The fact that we needed such overwhelming security presence—snipers, drones, explosives detection platforms't a sign of state oppression. It's a symptom of our collective failure to handle disagreement like adults.
Looking Forward Without Blinking
So where do we go from here? I don't have a tidy answer, and I'm suspicious of anyone who does. What I know is this: Next time there's a match that makes people uncomfortable, we need to make different choices. Protest if you must—peaceful assembly is sacred. Use your voice, your platform, your creativity to make your point heard.
But leave the barriers where they are. Leave the bottles in recycling bins where they belong. Leave other humans unharmed, even when—especially when—you disagree with them.
Because sport isn't just about athletes performing for our entertainment. It's about the shared experience of being human together, of watching excellence unfold regardless of who's performing it, of remembering that beneath all our differences, we're the same species trying to make sense of our brief time on this spinning rock.
Violence steals that from us. And we can't afford to lose anything else.
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