Business of Sport Daire Whelan

Continuing with the David and Goliath theme of last week's article on American baseball coach Billy Beane, take the sports pages and check out the league standings in Serie A in Italy. Start at the top and you'll see Juventus in first place - no surprise there. Now move down to second and see if you recognise the name: Messina.

Messina, a little-known club from Sicily, are creating ripples in Italian football, lying just two points off Juve after five games. To put this into some perspective, seven years ago they were an amateur side with barely a pitch to speak of and little more than two years ago they did not even have the money for Serie B.

Back in September they marked their arrival on the big stage by beating AC Milan 2-1 in their own back yard.

"Our victory defies logic because our predictions at the outset were catastrophic. In fact, our objective was to come to Milan, put on a decent show and try to contain the damage," said Messina's manager, Bortolo Mutti, after the game.

But since then, the club have continued their winning streak. With a ragbag team of players who have built their success thus far on spirit and organisation, Messina will do well to hang onto their newly created stars. Left-back Allesandro Parisi spent years in the lower divisions before making a name as the Roberto Carlos of the Strait of Messina with 14 goals last season and sparking rumours of a move to Juventus.

Ricardo Zampagna, who scored the winners against AC and Lazio this season, spent his earlier years fixing chairs and playing part-time for Serie D side Pontevecchio and, at the age of 30, has finally made the top flight.

Domenico Giampa was unemployed five years ago and has played all of his career in the lower leagues. Arturo di Napoli had changed clubs 11 times in 13 years and was moving farther down the divisions with each move.

Whether Messina can stay challenging for honours remains to be seen but their success is already having a positive effect on Sicily's economy, with locals believing they will see increased business and investment from the attention the club is generating.

Most pressing of all for the islanders, though, is to finally see a bridge being built across the Strait of Messina to the mainland. Italian President Silvio Berlusconi has long promised Sicilians such a bridge but it is only now they are actually believing it may come to pass.

"Now it will be easier to build the bridge. These victories represent an extraordinary chance for economic growth. Watch how, thanks to soccer, the bridge will finally be built," said Sergio Bille, president of Italian retailers' body Confcommercio.

Ironically, the club's owner, Pietro Franza, and the man responsible for much of the turnaround in the club's fortunes, has made his millions through his boat transportation service across the Strait of Messina, the only way to travel across the thin stretch of water to the tip of Calabria, the "toe" of boot-shaped Italy.

The south has long been an economic backwater in Italy and Sicily merely a forgotten outpost in the Mediterranean. Now though, in what would be a cruel twist of irony for a man who has pumped over €4 million into the club over the last two years, Berlusconi has promised Sicily a bridge to the mainland by the end of the year.

Where that would leave Franza's ferry business remains to be seen but so far, he has been welcoming it. "My city is beautiful, but it ranks dead last in just about everything," he said. "It doesn't express anything worthwhile; it's a dead city. The footballing success was a rallying cry. It's the city's way of saying 'we exist, we are alive, do not forget us'."

In the latest rankings of Sole 24 Ore, an annual list of the most desirable cities in Italy, Messina came last. Businessmen and economists are now looking south to see if things will change, and just how much.

"I'm curious to see how it will be this year and if sports will have some sort of impact," said Sergio Bille.

Many have compared Messina's rise to Nottingham Forest's rise under Brian Clough. But something even bigger seems to be going on: across the south there has been a rise in the fortunes of their football clubs.

Fellow Sicilians Palermo are also doing well, having come up from Serie B last year, while Lecce are holding their own in mid-table. There have never been more teams from the south in Serie A.

Candido Cannavo, the Sicilian-born former editor-in-chief of the Gazzetta dello Sport, applauded the southern showing in a recent front-page editorial: "An honest truth is emerging after years of stupidity, and I would also say heresy, with respect to the socio-economic sporting reality of the country. The problems, the faults and the vices of the south we all know too well, because we were born and raised there. But for soccer to be absent didn't make sense.

"The love for soccer is everywhere, despite everything being done to destroy it, but in the south there exists a permanent passion, an epochal hunger. And there is also fertile ground to build great things. Our south is a rich and unexplored reservoir."

With such rich fruits now ripening, the question is whether deep roots can be set down and real lasting influence established - in football and economic terms. Messina, under Franza, will not be running away with themselves either anytime soon. "Hopefully, we're showing there is a different way of doing things. Smaller clubs can be successful by staying small and sticking to the basics," said Franza.

We'll know more tonight though, when Messina take on Juventus in Turin. The King versus Pretender; north v south. It will tell us whether David can indeed topple Goliath.

Also this week

IOC president Jacques Rogge has said this year's Athens Olympics smashed previous records for TV coverage. Total broadcast hours were up over 15 per cent on the Sydney Games (35,000 hours compared to 29,600); live coverage increased, with more than half the world's broadcasters showing 4,000 hours of live competition; and prime-time coverage increased by 55 per cent compared to Sydney.

Crucially, though, viewing figures in the US, where NBC signed a multi-billion-dollar broadcast deal, were up 14 per cent; 203 million viewers in the US watched at least some of the Athens Games, the most for any Olympic Games held outside the US; while NBC's coverage ranked as the top programme every night during the Games.

Meanwhile, in Europe, viewing figures were up 50 per cent compared to Sydney 2000, with each European watching, on average, for 14 hours.

Wayne Rooney's agent Paul Stretford was accused of misleading a British court after charges against three men accused of blackmailing him were dropped this week. One of the accused, John Hyland, has called for a review of the way agents operate. His solicitor, Peter Quinn, said: "This case has highlighted the need for a thorough inquiry and a new set of rules in connection with the relationship between football agents, players and their families, football clubs and football managers at all levels of the professional game."

bizofsport@eircom.net

StockWatch

284p - Manchester United's share price hits a record high last Monday - up 11 per cent from September 27.

Go Figure

63,000 - Average GAA pay-out to each county in All-Ireland series. €500,000 - Estimated Kerry and Cork team expenses.

ListentoLombardi

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