Sports: Soccer: Italy's shame has players leadership calling for a No Soccer Year!

The Brit soccer site, Football365.com, carries an article "Italy Can't Just Play Happy Mondays" by Adam Fraser (Feb3,2k7). An episode of violence at a game between between Catania and Palermo, where the "the death of a policeman during riots at the Sicilian derby" has finally induced the desire for deep ethical reflection on where soccer is going.

...[T]he Italian players have called for a year without football. "I want my proposal taken seriously that soccer should stop for a year in order to reflect on the evils that exist," insisted Sergio Campana, president of the Italian players' association.

Sports, by Sportikos:

It might be necessary. Sometimes such measures are. The five-year ban on English clubs participating in Europe might have set our players back a decade or more in terms of technical ability, but what does that matter when you can go to a game safe in the knowledge that you won't be going home in a f**king ambulance?

Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind. Italian football finds itself in that position now. The world is watching.

The full article is recommended strongly for those of us who love sports, and soccer (football nonNorthAmerican).