Inter fans get travel ban

| Fri, 05/16/2008 - 03:17

Inter fans have been banned from travelling to the season's decisive last match at Parma on Sunday.

The ban puts Inter on an equal footing with rivals Roma, whose fans have been banned from travelling to their last match at Catania.

Inter are a point ahead of Roma, who must win and hope Inter loses or draws.

If Inter loses and Roma draws the two will finish level but Inter would get its third straight scudetto because of a better head-to-head record.

Inter fans said on their website they would defy the ban and stage a ''peaceful invasion'' of Parma.

''Inside or outside the city our voice must become a roar!'' the website said.

Roma fans, who had threatened to go to Parma unless Inter fans got the same treatment as them, are widely expected to defy their own ban and travel to Catania.

Parma is in the drop zone and Catania is also in the relegation mix.

Inter's preparations for the game have been unsettled by the publication of police wiretaps in a probe sparked by the arrest earlier this year of a prison guard accused of bringing drugs into a Milan jail.

Inter coach Roberto Mancini and defender Marco Materazzi have been named as among those who spoke on the phone to a jailed tailor with gangland connections who has dressed generations of Inter players.

The tailor, Domenico Brescia, is suspected of being one of the many detainees the guard brought in drugs for.

Prosecutors said Thursday no Inter player or official was under investigation.

An Inter official said Brescia's only association with the club was for emergency kit repairs at the club's training ground.

The tailor was arrested in 2002 in an operation that rounded up dozens of mafiosi accused of taking part in a 1987-1992 gangland war that killed 28 people in and around Milan.

Inter great Alessandro Altobelli said Thursday he and many other Inter players had bought clothes from the tailor over the past 30 years.

Altobelli said Brescia was ''an honest person, a fan known to everyone at Inter''.

The former international, who scored Italy's third goal in their 1982 World Cup Final win against West Germany, said he still had some clothes to pick up from Brescia's boutique.

Topic: