Ti Amo: The story behind an iconic derby tifo

Roma, 23 October 1983: Lazio 0-2 Roma.

Goals from Sebastiano Nela and Roberto Pruzzo.

In the Curva Sud, before the game, a huge banner is unfurled, like a cloud emerging over the Stadio Olimpico. On it, two words.

“Ti amo”
'I love you'

Vittorio Trenta, one of the long-time leaders of the Commando Ultrà Curva Sud (CUCS), was one of those who came up with the idea of the banner and saw it through to realisation. This is the story of one of the most iconic fan tifos of all time.

Where did the idea come from?

“It came to me some years beforehand, when I was watching the Moscow Olympics in 1980. The inspiration came from a display of the bear – the Olympic mascot – against a background, made up of bits of card. I thought it would be good to do something along the same lines, but with a really high-impact message. We did it for the derby in Serie A in 1983, three years later.”

In that derby, Roma were the reigning Italian champions while Lazio had just got back into Serie A. You decided not to rub that in, though…

“Well, look, our main focus has always been Roma. We acted out of love and passion for our club. And that was the sentiment we wanted to get across in our message. Obviously, we made fun of them plenty too. I remember one example was ‘Ciao ‘invidiosi’ [Ciao envious ones].”

Was it a challenge to make?

“It was a real slog, right up until the night before the game. You have to remember that we were making the banner in a flat measuring 70 square metres. It basically took up the whole house. Do you know how big the writing was? Almost a kilometre…

"There were a group of us, my wife included. At one point we ran into trouble with the M and we were worried that we weren’t going to finish in time for the game. A few of us stayed up all night, but in the end we got it to the stadium and those two simple words made history.”

Maybe it was because it was the first time that fans had expressed their love in that way…

“We were the first to do something like that. Obviously all fans have that bond with their team, but nobody had expressed it so directly or simply before.”

And it was a derby, of course.

“Not just another game. I don’t put those two colours together often at home or in what I wear. Perhaps I’m taking it too far, though!”

There aren’t going to be any fans in the stands for this Rome derby, for the first time ever. How do you feel about that?

“It’ll be sad and strange. Obviously it’s nobody’s fault, with the pandemic going on, but it will be strange not to see fans in the stadium. I hope it’s a memorable derby for Roma in a sporting sense, in terms of what happens on the pitch. [Paulo] Fonseca’s football is impressing me more and more.”

Have you ever watched a derby on TV before?

“No, this will be the first time. A few years ago I had some health issues and wasn’t able to go to the stadium for a while, but there wasn’t a derby. I think I might have missed a couple during the [Lionello] Manfredonia era.

It’s nearly a year since the stadiums and curvas of Italy were last full of fans…

“My hope is that – once all this is over – we recognise the importance of the people that pack out the stadiums every weekend. We must value those people. I hope we see more and more fans, rather than the standard 30,000 or 40,000 we get at every game. This period has shown us that football without fans is a different game. It can never be the same.”