GIVEN my love of football, the city of Napoli and people that give a damn about refugees and other vulnerable people, I was always going to like Napoli United. When I discovered they were managed by the son of Diego Maradona, the man who gave Scottish football one of its best nights, Argentina 2-England 1 in Mexico ’86, the sale was complete. 

I’m writing a book with my colleague Vince Raison called The Roaring Red Front; it’s about the world’s top leftist and anti-fascist clubs and is hopefully out later this year. Before going way down to Cosenza in Calabria, a raucous little trip you can read about in the book, I stopped off in Napoli to meet one of the founders of Napoli United. 

The club was founded as Afro-Napoli United in 2009 by local Neapolitans and two Senegalese immigrants. Its goal is to achieve and promote social inclusion through sport, focusing in particular on the involvement of migrants, asylum-seekers and young people at risk of exclusion residing in the Metropolitan area of Napoli. The team is now known as Napoli United and plays in the fifth tier of Italian football, the Eccelenza. 

My friend Sara Spiga in Napoli very kindly contacted the club and fixed up a meeting with Pietro in the northern part of the city. Pietro’s a big matey guy, one of the founders of the club: a proper leftist who proudly declared that, irrespective of any success, the club would never lose the principles that sparked their birth in 2009 as long as he and the other founders were involved.

Now Napoli is a rough-and-ready but very friendly city, I’ve often thought of it as like Glasgow with better weather. I’d been in Napoli for a couple of days before I met Pietro and it had rained incessantly, maybe this put me even more in mind of Glasgow and I mentioned Napoli United’s equivalents, United Glasgow. 

United Glasgow were founded in 2011 with similar principles and aspirations to those of Napoli United. Since then the club has welcomed players from over 50 countries and makes football accessible and affordable to almost 200 players across our four teams and other sessions. They have players of all genders, sexual orientations, religions, ethnicities, socio-economic positions and immigration statuses. 

I suggested that a game against the Uniteds of Glasgow and Napoli could be a good idea. Pietro immediately liked the idea and declared, “if that happened I would cry.” I advised him not to cry in Glasgow, things are changing for the better but the Mediterranean culture remains more open to displays of emotion from men. I promised to try to make this game happen.

I got in touch with United Glasgow on my return to Italy and their Chief Executive Julie Mulcahy called me back quickly, liked the idea and set the ball rolling to make the game happen. After a few rounds of discussion, with the linguistic and cultural differences being skilfully managed by Sara in Napoli, we arranged to go see Napoli United play on the island of Ischia in the middle of February, and to talk about the proposed game.

(Sara lived in London for years and regards the city as her second home, but she is very much from Napoli; she reminded a guy in Cosenza of this very forcefully when he made the big mistake of thinking she came from Rome.)

Ischia is a small island 19 miles away from Napoli in the Tyrrhenian Sea. Its population is about 20,000 but it has three football clubs; as the cab driver informed us, just saying “the football stadium” isn't enough.

Football in the south of Italy is huge and the passion and quality run deep. Both the latter qualities were nicely demonstrated during Napoli’s game against AS Barano Calico, a very tight 1-0 victory for Napoli United with passages of really fluent football punctuated with fouls and lengthy discussions about the fouls; the game’s ending was genuinely tense with a controversial sending off of a Barano player, and culminated in a bit of a punch-up on the pitch at the final whistle. 

I felt like breaking into a chant of “Hello, Hello, Napoli Aggro” but wasn’t sure about how it would translate, as well as being slightly unbecoming for an aspiring author who is well past middle-age. Football doesn’t always bring out the best in people – something that we will talk about in the book – but it does provide a unique international language and catalyst for the establishment of relationships. 

We left Napoli and Ischia good friends with Pietro, a true comrade. And in the hands of people like Pietro and Julie, football can also be a force for good, bringing people together through emphasising that we are all connected, a much-needed counterforce to those that pursue their own agendas by forcing division on peoples that can and should get along. 

Pietro and Julie agreed to the game going ahead and are in the process of sorting out some details. We hope that the No Mean City Derby will take place in Napoli in May, with the prospect of a return match in Glasgow later this year. We will keep you in touch thorough the Morning Star, our biggest supporter in this enterprise. If you want to come over to see the game please let me know, Napoli is a place like no other and should be on anyone’s list.