Italian director Pupi Avati has apologized to Lazio fans, president Claudio Lotito and Corriere dello Sport editor Ivan Zazzaroni in an open letter published yesterday on the Corriere dello Sport’s website.
In his latest book L’archivio del Diavolo (The Devil’s Archive), one of the characters, Furio Momente, is called a ‘Lazio fan’. Fans were upset about this and complained on social media, forcing the Bologna-born director to apologize.
Avati addressed the letter to Lotito and Zazzaroni, saying:
Illustrious and dear President Lotito and dear Editor Zazzaroni, in your newspaper I read with great regret how two short lines from my novel L’archivio del Diavolo (The Devil’s Archive) were considered offensive to Lazio fans.
It was certainly not my intention to hurt anyone, least of all the fans of one of the teams that both for family reasons (my children have always been Lazio fans) and for sentimental reasons (I am a friend of Pippo Inzaghi and consequently a great admirer of Simone’s for years) I consider to be one of the indisputable realities of our football.
With that exchange of jokes between the night watchmen of the Ministry of Justice (a scene set in the distant 1950s) I wanted to give verisimilitude to a current interlocution, salacious and corrosive, which can still be heard in any context of the capital.
I probably made a mistake, and I really apologize to you and to all the fans, in not having considered that with that couple of short jokes, I would have hurt the sensitivity of the many followers of Lazio.
While waiting for the new goals of the great Ciro Immobile, I greet you with friendship. Pupi Avati.
MORE: Lazio’s Tare Attacked by Pit Bull on Wednesday, One Pet Dead & the Other Injured
MORE: Lazio Building List of Possible Replacements for Strakosha, From Trubin to Montipo
