It takes a hard man to lead the “Ultra” football fans at Inter Milan, one of the most famous clubs in the world. Andrea Beretta certainly satisfied this criterion on September 4 when he fatally stabbed Antonio Bellocco five times in the neck and six times in the heart during an argument.
Beretta, 49, was swiftly arrested, but the murder has shone a light on the dark links between the Ultras — the most passionate, and sometimes violent, fans of Italy’s storied football giants — and another Italian institution: the mafia.
From his prison cell, Beretta fears for his life thanks to the identity of his victim, the scion of one of the bloodiest clans within Italy’s deadly ’Ndrangheta mafia.
“Beretta is going to meet a nasty end — the mafia cannot let this go unpunished, even if they wait years, meaning he won’t be safe for the rest of his life,” Marco Strano, a criminologist, said.
The two men were brought together by the dark side of Italian football. Bellocco, 36, had angered Beretta by allegedly trying to grab a slice of the eclectic rackets run by the Ultras, ranging from selling cocaine to parking permits at the San Siro stadium in Milan and taking kickbacks from burger stands.
“The Ultras run trips to away games and sell merchandise — there is a huge amount of money to be made at the stadium and the mafia wants a piece,” a senior magistrate told The Times.
As one Inter fan put it: “The ’Ndrangheta has always been involved, everybody knows it.”
Inter Milan supporters in the Curva Nord, the rowdiest section of the San Siro stadium where the Ultras give visiting teams a hostile reception
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In Turin, the ’Ndrangheta has been caught muscling in as a middleman for ticket sales between management and Ultra fans at Juventus, Italy’s most successful club. In Rome, the Camorra mafia from Naples reportedly backed a foiled attempt to take over Lazio. In Palermo, Cosa Nostra bosses have stepped in to resolve terrace feuds between fans.
In Milan, Bellocco ingratiated himself with Inter’s hardcore support after serving nine years for mafia crimes linked to his eponymous family clan, which runs drugs through the port of Gioia Tauro in its native Calabria in southern Italy, but has also sent gangsters to Milan to sell cocaine and launder money since the 1980s.
Beretta, who ran the Ultras despite being handed a football ban after beating up a stadium vendor selling scarves without his permission, ran a merchandise store in Pioltello, the town near Milan where Bellocco settled.
Gianluca Vailati, 52, a sales executive who runs an amateur football training session on a pitch near the shop, said Ultra bosses had frequently met there. “They were people from the curva [the rowdiest section of the San Siro stadium]and not the calmer ones but the most die-hard fans at the limits of legality,” he said.
While the shop has remained closed since Beretta’s arrest, some residents fear the ’Ndrangheta will take revenge for Bellocco’s murder. “I live above the shop, and we are thinking what would happen if they put a bomb there,” said Ferruccio Magnani, 59, a local artist.
Magnani said that Bellocco had been a frequent visitor to the shop. “Beretta is clearly a dead man walking — that is certain, it’s inevitable,” he said.
Antonio Bellocco, left, who had served time in jail for mafia crimes, often visited the merchandise shop near Milan run by Andrea Beretta, right
JAM PRESS
In an open letter, Bellocco’s family denied he had tried to carry out a mafia takeover of the Ultras, claiming he had “paid his debt to society” and moved to Milan to go straight.
Strano, the criminologist, said Bellocco’s supposed exit from the criminal scene might not matter. “The Bellocco clan are very dangerous and were involved in feuds in Calabria that claimed hundreds of lives. To maintain their power they cannot let a murder like this go unpunished,” he said.
The Opera prison in Milan might not keep Beretta safe, he added, pointing out that Bellocco’s father died there in January while serving time. “Jails in and around Milan are full of ’Ndrangheta inmates. Even if they move Beretta out of the region there are no safe jails for him in Italy,” he said.
Police have now placed Beretta’s family under guard and banned the Bellocco clan from holding a large mafia-style funeral, saying there was a risk they would use it as an “ostentatious display of the family’s criminal power” and use it as an opportunity for affiliates to “plan crimes”.
Beretta is in jail and his family has been placed under police guard
JAM PRESS
No one has forgotten the fate of Vittorio Boiocchi, Beretta’s predecessor as head of the Inter Ultras, who was fatally shot five times in the chest and neck by a hitman outside his Milan home in 2022.
His unsolved killing followed multiple jail sentences for drug trafficking with mafia clans, a business Boiocchi once bragged earned him €80,000 a month.
Before Bellocco’s murder this month, Milan prosecutors were already working on an investigation into ties between Ultra leaders and the ’Ndrangheta, according to Cesare Giuzzi, a journalist with the Corriere della Sera. “They know they are in trouble,” he said.
On Thursday night, the tension was palpable as about 250 Inter Ultras crowded into a café outside the stadium for their first weekly meeting since their leader was jailed, wondering who would fill the power vacuum.
The meeting was called by Nino Ciccarelli, 55, a veteran who has spent 14 years in jail and is serving a ban from stadiums on match days for his role in a 2018 fight in which a rival fan was run over and killed. “It is a very difficult time, very tense,” he said.
The meeting began not with references to the jailing of Beretta, but with logistical announcements relating to fans’ travel to forthcoming away games in Monza and Manchester.
While not referencing the murder, the main speaker, standing on a makeshift podium, called out the names of four top Ultras including Ciccarelli and said: “From now on we are your points of reference. For any problems, communicate them to us.”
The speaker then listed the number of years for which each leader was serving stadium bans for violent behaviour. “We are still here,” he said.
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