Penultimate day of the championship and last home round for VJS, which allo Excavation hosts Campo di Carne, a team from the homonymous hamlet of Aprilia. With the championship now in Torrino’s hands, the Castellani absolutely must win to collect points and then hope for a repechage among the best runners-up. It won’t be easy or obvious, but for the club and especially the fans, a promotion would be important in terms of growth and experience.
As always, I reach Velletri with the very comfortable train, which leaves me just a few hundred meters from the pitch. Coming from a difficult and eventful week, I admit for once that I appreciate the closeness and comfort. As well as, as always, the football on a human scale that reigns in these categories. Going from the process of collecting accreditation for the Europa League final to entering the green by simply opening a small door that connects the stands to the pitch has a certain effect. Being able to feel everything closer and at hand definitely gives me back a certain panache. Because the great event is beautiful, gratifying and essential for anyone who has decided to tell and photograph sports or topics related to it, but never forgetting where you come from keeps those roots alive which punctually give new life to move forward.
To celebrate the last housewife, the club lined up children in team uniforms on the pitch, in order to welcome the teams in by flying red and black balloons. I’m being honest: in general I don’t really like these things, especially when they happen in professional series. They always leave me with a plasticized and rhetorical aftertaste. Instead, I find that on this occasion everything succeeded very simply and helps to solidify the relationship of the little ones with the city team. Considering the bottom-up journey made by the VJS in recent years, there is an absolute need for the youngest and most active layer of Veliterno to immediately become aware of how important the native football center is, so as to be able to continue along this line and guarantee identity stability also in the coming years.
Whoever has laid important foundations for this stability and is working to involve more and more people is obviously the Volsca Band, which is still in place today. She is ready to support the Rossoneri team, putting the last forces of this long season in the stands. The ultras veliterni, as usual, dust off an excellent one performance made up of long-lasting choirs, hand clapping and three big flags waved practically non-stop. From time to time even some flashlights appear, which certainly never hurts. For these guys it was certainly a positive year, which saw them grow but which cannot be a point of arrival in the ultras world of 2023. As I often say: being satisfied, in general, only represents the beginning of the end. Always wanting to improve – obviously without falling into mania and compulsive perfectionism – is instead necessary to forge one’s work and slowly climb from step to step.
The great merit remains, on their part, of having been able to aggregate in a geographical area that is anything but simple. With Rome a stone’s throw away and with the majority of young people craving and mimicking the capital itself, it is difficult to come up with and insist on an ultras discourse at these latitudes. I say this with hindsight, having seen numerous realities born – perhaps even bringing in discrete numbers – but then implode on themselves a little out of demerit and a lot because of the social context they are faced with on a daily basis. Although he believes that in recent years there has been a sort of “return to the fold” by many, now tired of the hyper-commercial logic of Serie A, but also bored of feeling just a number in the middle of the tide rather than the first protagonists.
On the pitch, VJS resumed a few minutes from the end, with the match ending 1-1. A result that certainly dissatisfied the players and fans a little, who however wrapped themselves in a big hug after the triple whistle. After the triple whistle the first drops of rain begin to fall, a real constant in all my visits to Velletri. The public leaves the stands and I am awaited by the return train, bound for the Stadio Olimpico. Which, precisely, makes me redo that leap from reality on a human scale to the immense one of the metropolis. I am sure that without the first in my life I would have lived very differently – perhaps badly – even the second. And this is also the secret of those who in the province, in the small fields on the outskirts and in those with a few dozen places available, continue to cultivate their dream and passion, following their team and the word Ultras.
Simone Meloni