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In-depth conversations with the voices shaping culture, calcio, and society. Explore unique perspectives, personal stories, and inspiring journeys from around the world.
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All words and images by Guirec Munier
On the Ruins of Hanappi
On this summer Sunday in the Hütteldorf district of western Vienna, the Weststadion stands on the ruins of the Hanappi-Stadion, the former home of Austria’s most popular and successful club, Rapid Wien. While Viennese supporters and those of FC Blau-Weiß Linz share the same Biergarten without any animosity, Rapid Wien ultras gather in front of the entrances to Block West two hours before the Bundesliga season kicks off.
As with virtually every home game, Block West is sold out. Eight thousand people—mostly ultras—coexist and coordinate despite belonging to different groups. Owing to their seniority, the two Ultras Rapid capos set the tone. The first ultra group in the German-speaking world, Ultras Rapid are accompanied by the club’s two other main ultra groups: the Tornados and the Lords. One group initiates the chants, with the other two following from their respective perches in the stand.
Belonging to Block West
But you don’t need to enter the stand to see how deeply the ultras identify with Block West. In the passageways, murals created in honour of the ultra groups cover the concrete walls, while stickers adorn almost every door and surface.
The Rapid-Viertelstunde
As the minutes tick by, Block West roars again and again for its team, igniting numerous flares and unfurling a sea of flags. Then, at the start of the final fifteen minutes, led by Block West, the entire Weststadion rises to its feet and claps passionately for a full minute. This is the Rapid-Viertelstunde.
In the 75th minute of every match, fans honour this century-old tradition—a tribute to the fighting spirit of Rapid Wien, whose teams famously turned countless matches around in the final fifteen minutes during the 1920s. In a stadium in 2025, it is a rare sight: no one reaches for their smartphone to immortalise the moment. Here, they don’t take photos; they sing. Block West deliberately cultivates a touch of darkness.
After the Whistle
At the final whistle, following a match dominated by Rapid Wien, the 8,000 supporters—who had merged into one only moments earlier—gradually dispersed onto Gerhard-Hanappi-Platz.
All words and images by Guirec Munier
For Kate Carter-Larg, the Cheesy Toast Shack is a story of love, risk, hustling, triumph, tribulations, early mornings and late nights. It represents a dream that was worth putting everything on the line for. “We’d put all our savings into it, so failing was not an option,” Kate explains. “We hustled, we worked every day, we went to every event that was viable for us. We didn’t take on any staff until we were a few years in, we posted on social media every day, multiple times a day, and we shouted about our business and made people listen.”
Born in Dorset, in the South of England, the adventure of a lifetime would begin for Kate when she found herself travelling to Bali, in South East Asia. It was there she would meet Sam, her future husband and business partner.
“After a fleeting holiday romance, where we never thought we’d see each other again, he followed me down to Brighton (where I was living at the time). He decided he couldn’t live down there (distinct lack of surf) so got me to visit him in Scotland. I fell in love with it straight away, and pretty much decided to just not leave.
We had another year of travelling around a bit, including heading back to Bali to spend a few months of more beaches and surfing, before heading back to Scotland together with the idea of starting our own business.”
With only a small amount of savings between them, they knew that any kind of fixed cafe would be out of the question. “It just seemed so obvious, everyone loves a toastie, but not some dry, thin crappy Costa-style one. Instead, we wanted to do big, filthy, oozing with cheese-level toasties, with fillings that you don’t get just anywhere.”
With that idea, the wheels were set in motion. Scared, but with an unrelenting desire and determination to succeed, Kate and Sam put their life savings into everything and set off in search of their dream.
That dream would become a reality and take them all across the UK, to events, festivals and Glastonbury. They would be crowned Street Vendor of the Year, and earn the accolade of Scottish Street
Finalist. They would establish two sites, receiving visitors from all over the globe and go viral across social media. Renowned food critic, Jay Rayner, would give his seal of approval. Celebrities would come far and wide to taste their manchego with chorizo, red pepper and jalapeno chutney, or delight in their New Yorker made with sliced Swiss, pastrami, American mustard and sauerkraut. It would become a place that is now part of the family, with Kate, Sam and their two wonderful children.
It is a story that not even in her wildest of dreams could she have imagined. But it all happened. It really did. And it was a pleasure to sit down with Kate and talk about the journey she’s been on, her biggest challenges, being her own biggest critic and her proudest achievements.
We knew we wanted to be self-employed…we understood it’d be high risk and high stress, but we wanted to have a lifestyle where we could spend time together, and not have to answer to anyone else (we’ve always been quite headstrong and neither of us like being told what to do by someone else!)
We only had a small amount of savings between us, so we knew any kind of fixed cafe etc would be out of the question, so that immediately put us in the market for a food trailer. We just jumped on Gumtree and found a practically new trailer near Glasgow. A guy had bought it and then decided to not bother pursuing his burger van career, so we grabbed it and towed it back over to Fife.
We’d been looking at what was available street food-wise in Scotland, and the scene was starting to blow up. So many great options and traders, but no cheese toasties! It just seemed so obvious, everyone loves a toastie, but not some dry, thin crappy Costa-style one. Instead, we wanted to do big, filthy, oozing with cheese-level toasties, with fillings that you don’t get just anywhere.
Sam and I worked on the trailer, whilst getting everything else set up, and within a couple of months, we were good to go. We secured a pitch at a local beach and then would tow the trailer to events all over Scotland in between working Kingsbarns beach, to get the word out there about our brand and our business.
This did us wonders, as within our first year of trading we managed to secure a pitch at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where we got named the Best Place To Eat at The Fringe by The Scotsman newspaper.
Off the back of the popularity we experienced from being at such a huge event, we were in a position to apply for a pitch at the next Glastonbury Festival in Somerset. After doing this, our following took a massive jump, and we found we had people reaching out to us from all over the UK, saying they’d tried us and couldn’t stop thinking about our toasties.
During this time we were also doing every other event: street food markets, food competitions, music festivals, weddings….anything we could get our hands on. This eventually led to us then being offered the lease on our now main hub, in St Andrews. So at this point, we had our Kingsbarns pitch, our St Andrews kiosk, as well as multiple street food setups, allowing us to have 5 pitches across the Edinburgh Fringe Festival for the years running up to Covid, making us the biggest independent traders across the city for the Fringe.
Covid was a huge challenge at first. There were grants for some hospitality businesses, however, because we sublet our kiosk we didn’t pay rates, and we weren’t entitled to the first few rounds of grants. So trying to keep our heads above water really was a challenge, bearing in mind we had staff to think about, and at that stage, a 1 year old as well.
As initial lockdown measures eased, we were able to open up shop again, and thankfully, the rules dictated by the Scottish Government just so happened to mean we didn’t need to change much about our operational setup. We were always a takeout unit, from a hatch. We just needed to work with fewer staff on shift at once to keep numbers down, but it was good for us that people were allowed to go for a walk and meet a friend outdoors, as that matched the description of what people did anyway when they’d come to one of our beaches.
It did, however, have a massive impact on the events industry, meaning it was the first time since we started that we weren’t doing any street food at all, or weddings. This obviously meant the income of the business took a massive hit, which was certainly a negative. However, in hindsight, it made us re-evaluate how lucky we were to still have the pitches we were able to trade from.
When the grants that we did qualify for eventually came out, we used that money to invest in the business, by upgrading our equipment. We bought a decent coffee machine, a soft-serve ice cream machine, and high-quality grills. We felt if we could get our products out at a much faster speed and even better quality, then we were utilising what we could, given the restrictions put upon us by the pandemic. And just to make things that little bit extra stressful, we decided it was a good time to have our second baby.
Our biggest achievement would have to be the Glastonbury Festival. We loaded up our campervan and towed our trailer all the way from Scotland. We were located at Worthy View which is the “posh” campsite at the top of the farm, with the pre-erected tents (not that we were allowed to stay in those).
We were only allowed the bare minimum of staff passes (the cost of a ticket per staff member is factored into your pitch fee so we couldn’t afford many). We got a few friends to come down with us to work, thinking we’d get to spend a decent chunk of the festival watching music and enjoying the festival…how wrong we were! We were mobbed from the minute we opened the hatch in the morning, doing breakfast toasties to the hungover masses, all the way through the day, with a small window where it quietened off when the headlining acts were on, and then went crazy busy again through to the early hours. We came back to Scotland exhausted but with an amazing feeling of pride and achievement.
Another of those pinch-me moments was when Jay Rayner, the famous food critic who writes for The Guardian / The Observer, came to visit us. He left a glowing review and then featured us in the Guardian’s best-value places to eat around the coast of the
Abi, who’s our manager at the St Andrews shop actually asked me the other day if I ever think how wild it is that people drive so far to come to our shack and hold it in such high regard. And that this is all for something that we have created. It really made me stop and think how cool that is. We’re so well received, and people really do make huge trips just to come and try our food. It’s very humbling, although I do still find myself being my biggest critic. If I know a famous person is coming down, I panic, and worry that they’ll just think “What’s all the fuss about?” However, that has not actually happened yet!
We love how, generally, everything is received really well on social media. We know we post a lot, but it’s paid off. Every single day we get at least one customer coming down to the hatch, to say they’ve come because they’ve seen our silly/cheesy videos online and it’s made them want to visit. We get the occasional troll which always blows my mind, but I just need to remind myself that our socials are free marketing, and it’s obviously working, because we get customers and followers from all over the world. Just this week alone, I’ve posted t-shirts and hoodies to New York, and Philadelphia
Our followers and likes have taken a huge surge in the last year since we’ve really picked up our efforts online. We find now that simply posting a photo of a toastie doesn’t get the same levels of interaction as when we post videos, so it’s just about continuing to follow trends and posting videos, and just trying to make our page something a bit silly and fun.
I would advise anyone looking to set up their own business, to just go for it. We always get people asking us “Weren’t we scared it wouldn’t work?” Of course we were, we’d put all our savings into it, so failing was not an option.
We hustled, we worked every day, we went to every event that was viable for us. We didn’t take on any staff until we were a few years in, we posted every day, multiple times a day, and we shouted about our business and made people listen.
I honestly don’t know if I’d have it in me now to hustle as hard as we did back at the beginning, but I’ve also got 2 small children now who I love spending time with, so I couldn’t be towing trailers back from Edinburgh at 1 am, as I love that I can be present for them and be the one that does every bedtime and that I get to see them every morning.
If I’m not working, I try to start the day off by getting to the gym. A couple of years ago, after having my youngest daughter, I got into CrossFit, which I just fell in love with. I’m still not very good at it but it helps my headspace as well as my physical fitness.
Sam and I try and get out for a walk together; our favourite place being Tensmuir Forest, where we love to stop for a crepe from Salt and Pine. We may have to answer a few emails/go and film some videos for the pages, and before we know it 3 o’clock rolls around and it’s time to grab our girls from school/playgroup
If they’ve not got after-school clubs then they may ask us to take them to the skatepark to practice their skateboarding. If it’s not a school day then we try and get them for a surf at West Sands (if there is any) followed by live music at Dook and a few Aperol Spritz’ for us. Whatever we do, it’s hugely family-oriented. With 7 cousins living close by, and 3 sets of aunties and uncles, as well as Sam’s parents, we’re invariably hanging out with other Largs.
Every Christmas we have raclette on the menu, which is raclette cheese, served over garlic potatoes with charcuterie meats and dressed salad. You basically scrape the melted cheese over the potatoes, and it’s just amazing. It’s such a treat, and can’t help but make you feel festive.
For the year ahead, we want to keep concentrating on giving the best possible products to our customers. We feel that we’re on a really positive trajectory at the moment. Our team’s collective hard work is getting more and more recognised, with a greater following online and more customers coming to the shops. We want to concentrate on keeping this at a high level, and who knows, if the market is right, maybe even opening up some more locations.
With all our thanks to Kate Carter-Larg
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Reimagining clothing as a moving canvas through Acrylic Fusion.
Reimagining clothing as a moving canvas through Acrylic Fusion.
With anticipation building ahead of this summer’s FIFA World Cup, Scottish contemporary artist Craig Black unveils Atlético Fusion — a visionary art project translating his signature Acrylic Fusion technique from canvas to fabric.
The project reimagines what football apparel — and clothing more broadly — can be when art, culture, and storytelling collide. More than a football shirt, Atlético Fusion explores the idea of clothing as a moving canvas, where colour, texture, and energy shift with the body, allowing art to be lived, worn, and experienced in everyday life.
At the heart of the project is Craig Black’s belief that wearable art is a mindset — a way for art to exist beyond walls, embedding itself into identity, culture, and human expression.
A Case Study in Wearable Art
Presented through a conceptual football shirt and fictional club, Atlético Fusion demonstrates what’s possible when original artwork is thoughtfully translated into wearable form.
Acting as a creative proof point, it shows how Acrylic Fusion can retain its depth, movement, and emotional energy when applied to fabric.
The result is a garment designed to exist both on and off the pitch: a cultural object that reflects ambition, imagination, and individuality, and illustrates how art can help tell richer stories through product.
From Canvas to Clothing
The Atlético Fusion shirt originates from a unique, hand-poured Acrylic Fusion artwork. Using Craig’s distinctive process, layers of colour interact organically, creating fluid motion and captivating visual energy.
That original artwork was then meticulously adapted for fabric, ensuring the textures and rhythm of the piece live within the garment as it moves with the wearer. The process highlights how Studio Craig Black specialises in translating art into new formats without losing its soul — whether applied to clothing, objects, packaging, or environments.
Personal Connection & Creative Journey
For Craig, Atlético Fusion is deeply personal — a way of sharing his own story.
Football was his first love and creative outlet. As a child, he expressed emotion through sketching long before discovering painting, eventually pursuing a career as a professional footballer. Experiencing the sport from the inside gave him a deep understanding of its culture, identity, and emotional power.
Those early drawings and lived experiences have since evolved into an international artistic practice spanning global brand collaborations, live performances, and exhibitions. Atlético Fusion brings that journey full circle — uniting Craig’s passion for football with his distinctive Acrylic Fusion technique.
Storytelling Through Wearable Art
Designed to be gender-inclusive, Atlético Fusion challenges traditional boundaries between sport, fashion, and fine art. It demonstrates how wearable art can communicate values, identity, and cultural relevance — offering a new way to express who we are and what we stand for.
At its core, the project reflects a simple belief:
Art lives beyond walls, and football inspires far beyond the pitch.
Both are powerful cultural languages, capable of telling human stories through movement, emotion, and imagination.
Artist Quote
“Atlético Fusion isn’t about a football shirt — it’s about possibility. It shows how my Acrylic Fusion technique can live on the body and become part of someone’s identity. This is wearable art as storytelling, where creativity moves, evolves, and connects with people.”
— Craig Black
A Timely Cultural Moment
Arriving as the world looks toward a FIFA World Cup hosted across the USA, Mexico, and Canada, Atlético Fusion reflects the growing intersection of sport, fashion, and culture on a global stage.
For Craig Black — a former professional footballer and proud Scot — the project also carries personal significance, aligning with Scotland’s return to the World Cup and reinforcing his vision to bring fine art into new environments, expanding its relevance across industries, communities, and cultures.
About Craig Black
Craig Black is an internationally recognised contemporary visual artist known for his signature Acrylic Fusion technique — a hand-poured paint process that creates mesmerising, fluid artworks. He specialises in telling brand stories through his art. His work spans fine art, commercial collaborations, live performances, installations, and experiential design. Craig has collaborated with leading global brands and continues to push the boundaries of how art can live in the world.
Studio Craig Black
Email: hello@craig.black
Website: https://craig.black/
Instagram: @_CraigBlack
LinkedIn: Craig Black
All words and images by Guirec Munier
“A place that, despite ongoing gentrification, was forged in adversity — and where defiance remains central to its identity.”
Inside the World of FC St. Pauli
Sankt Pauli. The mere mention of the name evokes a world of its own, stirring strong and often opposing emotions. FC St. Pauli is a neighbourhood club — but not just any neighbourhood. It belongs to the alternative district of Hamburg, Germany’s second-largest city and Europe’s third-busiest port.
This is a district bisected by the Reeperbahn and its surrounding streets, where strip clubs, sex shops, and brothels form the heart of Hamburg’s red-light district. A place that, despite ongoing gentrification, was forged in adversity — and where defiance remains central to its identity.
That spirit would come to define FC St. Pauli itself.
Founded in 1910, the Braun und Weiß club underwent a dramatic transformation in the mid-1980s. Until then largely apolitical, the club took a sharp turn as squatters, punks, and other outsiders found refuge on the right bank of the Elbe. These marginalised groups soon formed the core of the fan base, particularly throughout the 1990s, standing as an island of resistance in a German football landscape plagued by neo-Nazi hooliganism.
Championing anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, and anti-sexist values — alongside vocal support for refugees and LGBT+ rights — FC St. Pauli became an emblem of the left. A football club like no other.
Whatever one might think, football is undeniably political. And what better symbol to represent resistance than a pirate flag? Thus, the Jolly Roger was adopted at the initiative of supporters. Few could have imagined at the time that this gesture would become such a powerful and profitable symbol. So much so that FC St. Pauli supporters are now the only fans in Germany who often don’t wear their club’s official colours.
This fusion of alternative culture and sharp branding has allowed the club to grow far beyond Hamburg and German borders. Today, FC St. Pauli is among the four German clubs generating the highest revenue from merchandise sales, alongside Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, and Schalke 04.
This commercial success appears to contradict the club’s values — yet how else can they compete without the financial rewards enjoyed by Europe’s elite? Especially when they remain the only fan-owned club playing in one of the top five European leagues.
In a further expression of this model, the club recently sold the Millerntor-Stadion in the form of shares to more than 21,000 supporters. The stadium is now leased back to the club by its fans.
Before every home match, die-hard supporters gather in a convivial space beneath the Gegengerade — the stand holding more than 10,000 standing spectators. Here, alternative subcultures, anarchists, and activists of all kinds mix freely. In the Südtribüne, each game becomes an opportunity to raise awareness or promote a humanitarian cause. At the Millerntor, there is no expectation that you leave your brain at the turnstiles.
Yet divisions have emerged in recent times. Since the war in Gaza, the Israeli–Palestinian conflict has exposed deep fractures within the European left. In Germany, a traditionally pro-Israel stance — shaped by historical guilt linked to Nazism and the Holocaust — increasingly clashes with positions held by left-wing movements elsewhere in Europe, many of which express stronger support for the Palestinian cause.
These tensions are visible within the FC St. Pauli community itself, particularly between local supporters and international fan clubs. Several overseas fan groups have voted to dissolve, and the historic friendship between Ultra’ St. Pauli and the Green Brigade did not survive the fallout.
The German left remains trapped in a German-centric reading of Israeli policy — a stance that continues to divide.
Gegen Rechts. Everywhere.
All words and images by Guirec Munier
Words and images: Markus Blumenfeld
We spoke to filmmaker, storyteller and creator of The Global Game, Markus Blumenfeld, about football and culture in Japan, a country where the sport has been carefully shaped, curated, and woven into everyday life.
From the J.League’s ambitious “hundred-year vision” to rooftop pitches in Tokyo, family-filled terraces in Nagasaki, and train journeys linking cities rarely mentioned in the same breath, Markus reflects on a football culture defined not by chaos or confrontation, but by discipline, balance, and quiet intensity.
His journey traces how the game lives beyond matchday, through fashion, food, design, and shared public spaces—and how Japan has built a football identity that feels uniquely its own.
A Long-Standing Curiosity
Japan had been sitting in the back of my mind for years—a place people describe with the same words they use for good football: precise, disciplined, and beautiful when it all comes together. What finally pushed me to go was hearing about the J.League’s “hundred-year vision,” the idea that a country could try to engineer its football future as carefully as it builds skyscrapers or subway networks. I wanted to see it firsthand.
Following the Game by Rail
I based myself in Tokyo and moved mostly by train, tracing the game through cities that don’t usually share a sentence: Osaka, Nagasaki, Kashiwa, Iwata, and Tokyo. Along the way, I encountered a football culture that feels singular.
In Japan, football isn’t confined to matchdays; it’s woven into fashion, transit, food, and design. The J.League didn’t simply import the sport; it curated it, selecting the most expressive and beautiful elements from football cultures around the world and shaping something distinctly its own.
Football in the Everyday
In Japan, the game lives everywhere—maybe not as overtly as in the favelas of Brazil or the beaches of Morocco—but on rooftops in Shibuya, in pickup sessions in parks, and on the racks at 4BFC, where vintage J.League shirts hang beside copies of SHUKYU, a Japanese football culture magazine and design studio.
I spent days with my friend Kai just walking and playing, juggling in alleys, trading passes on tiny concrete courts hidden behind apartment blocks, riding trains out toward Mount Fuji to find a pitch with the mountain sitting perfectly behind the goal.
Nagasaki and the Power of Belief
Further south, I stood pitchside watching V-Varen Nagasaki fight for promotion to J1. These fans weren’t the usual suspects I’ve seen in my travels, hooligans with buzzcuts and tattoos, but instead families, elderly women, and children standing shoulder to shoulder, chanting in perfect unison for six hours straight.
A promotion race in the second division had pulled an entire port city into the same rhythm.
Development, Disappointment, and Perspective
In Osaka, at Cerezo’s training ground, academy coaches talked about developing players who can leave for Europe and not get lost—footballers equipped not just technically, but culturally and mentally.
Back near Tokyo, I watched Kashiwa Reysol win their final match of the season, only to miss out on the title by a single point. The margin was brutal, but the response wasn’t. The following day, the team’s captain, Tomoya Inukai, invited me to meet him at his café, sit with his family, and talk about his belief that life is about so much more than football—and the many things he does to live a balanced life.
It’s the kind of invitation that simply wouldn’t happen in most other places.
A Different Kind of Intensity
Compared to Brazil or Serbia, Japanese football feels less explosive on the surface, but it runs just as deep. The stands are loud, the tifos huge, yet the atmosphere is strangely gentle—kids and grandparents in the ultras section, orderly queues for yakitori, everyone cleaning up their own mess.
None of this compromises the energy. They don’t need hate to fuel their rivalries, only passion and pride for their club.
Come Hungry
The Japanese brand of football is special, and if you’re lucky enough to visit this beautiful country, come hungry.
Eat what’s sizzling outside the stadium—yakitori, karaage, regional specialities you can’t pronounce yet. Ride trains to places that aren’t in the guidebooks. Get lost in side streets and izakayas. Go to a J.League match. Join the crowd and relish the songs and the atmosphere.
Have a freshly poured Japanese beer. Have another. Make friends in the stands and experience a culture and passion for football unlike anywhere else in the world.
Words and images: Markus Blumenfeld
Markus Blumenfeld is the creator of The Global Game, a docu-series that captures the stories, fans, and moments that make football special. Using the beautiful game as a lens to view the world, the series explores football as an unspoken language—one that connects people from different places, backgrounds, and cultures. A uniting force in a divided world.
You can also find The Global Game on YouTube
All images by Alessandra Francesca Coppola
“Fighting and believing in a dream driven by the faith in a team that represents the pride of a city and its people.”
There is no gentle way to explain why Salernitana are in Serie C. Relegation rarely arrives with poetry attached. It arrives with balance sheets, tribunal rulings, and fixture lists that suddenly look unfamiliar. By the summer of 2025, the club had slipped out of Serie B following the relegation play-off, completing a sharp fall from Serie A just a season earlier.
For Alessandra Francesca Coppola, a photographer who has spent years documenting the club and its supporters, league position is only part of the story.
“Salernitana represents that ‘old-school football’ that is slowly disappearing,” she says. “A club from southern Italy that doesn’t benefit from the same privileges as others, especially the big teams.”
That sense of imbalance has always hung over Salernitana. Founded in 1919, the club has been liquidated, refounded, renamed, and rebuilt multiple times across its history. Stability has come in short spells, usually followed by administrative trouble or relegation. This is not nostalgia; it’s an institutional fact. Salernitana have spent far more of their existence navigating the lower divisions than enjoying the top flight.
When they did return to Serie A in 2021 after a 23-year absence, it came with caveats. Ownership complications linked to Lazio meant the club was forced into a hurried sale before the season even began. Survival on the pitch was achieved. Stability off it was not. By 2024, Salernitana were back in Serie B. By 2025, Serie C.
Alessandra frames it differently.
“You don’t always win, but you always fight, you never give up.”
That line sounds like a chant, but it functions more like a diagnosis. Salernitana have never been built to dominate Italian football. They have survived it instead, often noisily, sometimes chaotically, and usually without the protections afforded to clubs with larger commercial pull or northern geography.
Their home ground, the Stadio Arechi, reflects that contradiction. Opened in 1990 and owned by the municipality, it holds nearly 38,000 people, far more than most third-tier grounds. On paper, it’s excessive. On matchday, it makes sense.
“The Arechi becomes fire,” Alessandra says. “Chants, whistles, flares, flags that turn the Curva Sud Siberiano into a sea of granata.”
Granata is not just a colour here. It’s shorthand for belonging. Salernitana’s identity has always snapped back to it, regardless of crest redesigns or corporate resets. Players come and go. Owners change. The shirt stays the same.
“The grit and devotion of the Granata supporters are unique and famous throughout Italian football, so much so that even players know about it.”
That reputation travels. Opposing players mention it in interviews. Managers prepare for it. The atmosphere often feels disproportionate to the level of football being played.
“Every match feels like a Champions League final!” Alessandra says — not as exaggeration, but as observation.
And yet, context matters. Salernitana are not an abstract idea of passion; they are rooted in Salerno, a port city on the Tyrrhenian Sea with a long memory and a defensive sense of self. Founded as a Roman colony in 197 BC, Salerno has spent centuries being passed through, ruled over, and landed upon. During the Second World War, it became a frontline again, hosting the Allied landings of Operation Avalanche in 1943.
Football clubs absorb the psychology of their cities. Salernitana have absorbed Salerno’s: wary of outsiders, sceptical of authority, slow to trust, quick to rally.
That’s why Coppola’s words about belief carry weight in a season like this one.
“And yet here we are, in Serie C, fighting and believing in a dream driven by the faith in a team that represents the pride of a city and its people.”
There is no talk here of “sleeping giants” or inevitable returns. Serie C is not treated as a narrative device. It is treated as a place you survive until you don’t have to anymore.
The club’s traditional nickname, Bersagliera, is still sung, still written on banners, still shouted into the cold air on nights when logic suggests staying home.
“Avanti Bersagliera.”
It’s not a rallying cry for glory. It’s closer to a statement of persistence. Keep going. Keep turning up.
In an era where Italian football increasingly mirrors European trends — consolidation, branding, risk management — Salernitana remain awkward to categorise. They are too big to disappear quietly and too unstable to settle comfortably. That tension defines them more than any league table.
Alessandra puts it most plainly when she recalls a chant that cuts through all of it:
“Jamm a vrè, non tifo per gli squadroni ma tifo te” — Let’s be clear, I don’t support the big teams, I support you.
Not success. Not scale. Not the idea of football as a product.
Just the club.
All images by Alessandra Francesca Coppola
All words and Images: Will Dunn
Driven by a long-standing connection to Moroccan football and memories of unforgettable nights in Casablanca, Will Dunn returned to Morocco to document the heart and soul of this year’s Africa Cup of Nations. Having previously experienced the raw intensity of Raja and Wydad matches, the opportunity to witness AFCON on Moroccan soil felt impossible to ignore.
From packed cafés and flag-draped streets to thunderous stadiums alive with colour and noise, his journey became a celebration not just of football, but of the culture, community and shared passion that defines the tournament.
A Return to Morocco
I had the chance to spend a month in Morocco a few years ago and bounded around by train and bus, taking in everything the country had to offer. The memories from that trip that stayed with me the most were the two matches I saw in Casablanca, Raja and Wydad playing over the course of the weekend.
I’d always heard how passionate the fan bases were for the big teams, but the support had to be seen to be believed. I had always wanted to get back out to Morocco, and when I saw that AFCON was out there this time around, I jumped at the opportunity to return.
Football Everywhere
Football is everywhere in Morocco. You only have to walk through the souks and past the cafés to see football matches from across the globe being shown on TVs, or souk vendors watching matches or highlights on their phones.
The cafés are brimming with locals sipping tea, glued to AFCON. Away from the international stage, your attention is caught by murals for local clubs adorning the sides of buildings and the visceral enthusiasm around the return of the Botola League post-AFCON.
Matchday Energy
The support is some of the most impassioned you are likely to see in the grounds. Motorbikes and scooters hurtle towards the stadiums with horns blaring and anticipation building. The sound doubles once you’re inside, with wall-to-wall noise for 90 minutes, with supporters’ groups often arriving an hour before kick-off to build the atmosphere.
In the Stands and Streets
You don’t have to look far before seeing someone walking draped in the flag of a country that is competing or has competed in AFCON. Often, you’ll see people from two countries shaking hands and embracing before games, with mutual respect being the standout feature of fan interaction. Once in the ground, it’s a party-like atmosphere — the noise does not stop.
At half-time, you see those who observe or practise praying in the concourse, a stark contrast to the European football experience, where people bustle to queue up for a pint.
Supporting the Underdog
Standing next to the Senegal supporters for their match against Sudan was a sight and sound to behold. Even the backing for less established footballing nations such as Benin and Burkina Faso had something to offer, not least because the Moroccan support seemed to always back the underdog. Every tackle, pass, cross and rare goal by the smaller teams is cheered furiously.
The memory of Aamir Abdallah scoring his wonder goal for rank outsiders Sudan in their match against Senegal and sending their pocket of supporters wild will live with me forever.
Travelling in the Host Nation
The ease of travel between each city, from Tangier to Rabat and Agadir to Marrakesh, meant moving around such a vast country proved smooth enough. I was very taken by the design of Stade Adrar in Agadir.
In a world where new stadiums often have a copy-and-paste bowl style, it seemed to the untrained eye that those responsible chose to keep true to some semblance of local architecture. For the most part, getting into the grounds, whilst a long way out of town, the queues moved fairly quickly.
On the surface, the apparent conviviality between supporters from different countries has been a real change from a European perspective.
Looking Ahead
I am writing this a few days before the semi-finals and saw both Senegal and Egypt take to the field, who face each other in Tangier. The teams in the semi-finals are those you might expect, with Nigeria and hosts Morocco in the other match.
My gut is saying Morocco, as it’s hard to look past their talent on the pitch, backed by fervent home support. That being said, I would love to see Senegal cause an upset, they were amazing on the pitch and in the stands against Sudan. There is no out-and-out favourite purely on footballing terms in my eyes, and that’s what makes it an exciting finale.
All words and Images: Will Dunn
