The Champions! Just before the kick-off of Naples-Paris SG on Tuesday, the entire audience at the San Paolo stadium will scream as the last words of the anthem of the Champions League and the earth will tremble.
It's a little more than a way of speaking. Because every time the tifosi of Napoli let out this cry or that their team marks in a great match, the local seismic institutes record the shock, like a mini-earthquake.
Both pride and shame of Naples, the stadium San Paolo is a paradox of reinforced concrete and iron, an architectural monstrosity with a prestigious history, where the atmosphere can become unique, driven by the fury of the fans and the din of metal an obsolete structure.
This framework of iron that gives it the air surrounded by scaffolding and roof Plexiglas are the questionable heritage of the renovation work undertaken in the context of the World-90. Previously, the district of Fuorigrotta, in the west of the city, was born without roof in 1959 and named Sun Stadium.
Over the years and works, its capacity has varied greatly, since the 89,992 spectators of a Naples-Perugia in 1979 - Italy record, even if the legend speaks of more than 95,000 people two years earlier to a Naples-Juventus-, with about 60,000 places today.
'John'
Above all, his condition has deteriorated a lot, and even in a country lagging behind the modernization of stadiums, he is now very far from the quality standards expected for a club regularly qualified in the Champions League.
Owned by the municipality, the San Paolo has long been the subject of a dispute between Mayor Luigi de Magistris and club president Aurelio De Laurentiis, who periodically calls it a "toilet" or "pigsty" .
When Real Madrid arrived in 2017, we also saw a leader hiding his face in his hands and sighing "what a shame" when he entered the wet-walled hall, which was set up to host Zinedine Zidane's press conference.
Posted on social networks by an English journalist before Naples-Liverpool, the video of the unlikely semi-buried corridor that goes around the field to lead journalists from the press conference room to the mixed zone has no more arranged the reputation of the enclosure.
"Of course he's old, of course he has problems, but he's scary for the opponents, they feel the weight of this stadium and the passion of the tifosi, when he is full he is exceptional," he says. yet at AFP Daniele "Decibel" Bellini, the inimitable speaker of San Paolo.
"But for us, it's mostly the stage where the greatest of all time has played, and that can not change, despite his age and the work that has ruined it," he added. at the microphone since 2010.
Sambuca and Borghetti
The Rolling Stones or Frank Zappa played there but "the biggest", it is of course Maradona, welcomed here by more than 60.000 people in 1984. The face of the Argentine is everywhere near the stadium, in photo in the bars, stenciled on the walls and still on the scarves of the sellers who approach each visitor to offer him small bottles of "sambuca and borghetti", a liqueur with anise and the other with the coffee.
In San Paolo, folklore is on the surface, but also underground. Built in 1990 under the lawn but never used and quickly walled, stadium car parks are the subject of dozens of stories, attested or not. De Laurentiis ensures that "black masses" are celebrated there, wild raves have been organized there and clandestine discotheques have been installed and dismantled there.
PSG fans do not come for that. And Wednesday when they enter the stadium, they will have the same impression as that felt by "Decibel" Bellini.
"He's giant, huge, monstrous, every time I have shaking legs . " But beware. If Naples scores, it's not just the legs that will shake.