After its grim end to 2018, Serie A returned from the winter break with an entertaining round of games
The crowd at San Siro was the smallest it had been for any game in this Serie A season, yet also perhaps the most uplifting. Inter’s match against Sassuolo was originally supposed to be played behind closed doors, as a punishment for racist abuse of Kalidou Koulibaly by supporters at the stadium last month. Club officials persuaded the footballing authorities to let them distribute 11,000 tickets to schoolchildren instead.
They filled a part of the stadium’s lower tier, with the remaining seats covered over by gigantic banners upon which ‘BUU’ had been printed in various fonts. That spelling is used by Italian journalists to represent monkey noises directed at black players during games. Inter were inviting us to reinvent the letters as an acronym – to be written, not said – ‘Brothers Universally United’ against discrimination.
Write and share your BUU so it's never heard again. Let's make it a message of unity, rather than racism. #BrothersUniversallyUnited #NoToDiscrimination #FCIM pic.twitter.com/J1gqj4gsOd
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Napoli 2-1 Lazio, Cagliari 2-2 Empoli, Fiorentina 3-3 Sampdoria, Spal 1-1 Bologna, Frosinone 0-5 Atalanta, Inter 0-0 Sassuolo, Udinese 1-2 Parma, Roma 3-2 Torino, Genoa 0-2 Milan