An Unusual Soccer Finale in Italy Reveals Libya's Frailties

New York Times

8 hours ago

On a quiet Sunday afternoon in Sesto San Giovanni, a commune on the northern outskirts of Milan, nearly a dozen police vans arrived to provide security at an aging stadium, which like the town itself had seen better days.
Milan is home to one of soccer's fiercest global rivalries, between AC Milan and Internazionale. But the police were not there for that. Instead, they had turned out in force in case of trouble between fans of two teams whose home base was more than 1,000 miles away, in Libya.
The game was part of a curious collaboration between Italian and Libyan authorities that for a second year running will see Libya's soccer champion crowned on Sunday in Italy, at the completion of a six-team mini-championship.
The transplanted tournament is a striking example of the security and political crisis that continues to plague Libya more than a decade after the bloody overthrow of its longtime dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
It is also a measure of Libyans' passion for the sport and of the explosive enmity between Tripoli's two most successful teams, a rivalry that played out last Sunday at the Ernesto Breda Stadium outside Milan.
The last time the two teams — Al Ittihad and Al Ahly Tripoli — had met was in June in Libya. Even though that game was played without fans, it ended up making global headlines about an abandoned match, an injured referee, unruly supporters storming the stadium and a team bus reduced to charred ruins.
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