Supporters and Rivalries
Roma is the fifth most supported football club in Italy behind Juventus, Internazionale, Milan and Napoli with around 7% of Italian football fans supporting the club (according to the Doxa Institute-L'Espresso’s research of April 2006). Historically the largest section of Roma supporters in the city of Rome have come from the inner-city, especially Testaccio.
The traditional ultras group of the club was Commando Ultrà Curva Sud commonly abbreviated as CUCS; this group was founded by the merger of many smallers groups and was considered one of the most historic in the history of European football. However, by the mid-1990s CUCS had been usurped by rival factions and ultimately broke up. Since that time, the Curva Sud of the Stadio Olimpico has been controlled by more right-wing groups; A.S. Roma Ultras, Boys, Giovinezza and others. The oldest group Fedayn is apolitical however and politics is not the raison d'être of Roma, just a part of their overall identity. In September 2009 the club unveiled plans to build a new 55,000-capacity stadium in Rome's western suburbs.
The most known club anthem and motto is Roma,Roma,Roma by singer Antonello Venditti. The title roughly means "Roma is not to be questioned, it is to be loved" and is sung before each match. The song Grazie Roma, by the same singer, is played at the end of victorious home games. Recently, the main riff of The White Stripes song Seven Nation Army has also become widely popular at games.
Read more about this topic: A.S. Roma
Famous quotes containing the word supporters:
“His [O.J. Simpson’s] supporters lined the freeway to cheer him on Friday and commentators talked about his tragedy. Did those people see the photographs of the crime scene and the great blackening pools of blood seeping into the sidewalk? Did battered women watch all this on television and realize more vividly than ever before that their lives were cheap and their pain inconsequential?”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)