Serie A hasn’t always been the most scrupulous of leagues. Its clubs have signed the sons of dictators and rehabilitated players caught up in match-fixing scandals. Recently, however, the Italian top flight has become more self-aware, more sensitive to its image, and more purposeful in the causes it promotes.
One of them is a collaboration with the
WeWorld non-profit organisation, which seeks to raise awareness of violence against women.
Serie A has dedicated a matchday to the issue in each of the past six seasons. In February of this year, players and match officials took to the pitch with a line of red face paint daubed on their cheeks, a symbol of such physical abuse. A video was also played on big screens in stadiums up and down the country and carried by the league’s domestic broadcast partners too. It featured Italian World Cup winners Alessandro Del Piero and Marco Materazzi and Olympic athletes Elisa Di Francisca and Marta Pagnini calling for violence against women to be shown the colour red — expelling it from society.