Mendrisio: Brave New World — Terrace Edition

Words: Damiano Benzoni

Images: Damiano Benzoni

The real world, the adult world can be cold and barren, like the concrete steps of the terraces. It can look scary or extremely dull, distant, snobbish and incomprehensible, as if six languages were spoken at the same time.

And God, puberty is a bitch. Hormones storming through our body, shoving our voices wildly out of tune, making us feel clumsy and ridiculous. Even though our slightly younger mates look at us in awe, longing for that transformation to hit them as well.

Years spent dreaming and planning, longing to replicate those grown-up gestures, to reenact those rituals from the dreaded and desired adult world. To find one’s place in the world.

Identification. The cruel process of killing, one by one, all the possible “I”s one can become. Of finding out how little space there is in adult life to keep them alive and how hard it will be to belong to somewhere after life starts serving its twists and its turns.

©Damiano Benzoni/ Terrace Edition. Young FC Mendrisio vs Kosova Zurich.

The kids I am seeing, though, haven’t been disillusioned yet. They chant about Mendrisio being their town, the town they’ll never leave, and I ask myself where will they all be in 20 years’ time. They are only 15 or so, they are incredibly young. But they are here, they are now, on the terraces to support Mendrisio.

They’re doing it in style, they’re well organised, they alternate on the drums and the megaphone, their prepubescent voices betraying them towards the end of the verse. They have flags and banners, even a huge tifo representing the shirt of Mendrisio with a number 12 on the back.

They have chants: most are copied from famous Italian stadium chants. The ones that would filter, almost clandestinely, through the corridors of a secondary school. I can almost imagine them whispering these songs somewhat conspiratorially, scribbling the lyrics on their school desks, entranced with fascination with this adult thing they discovered.

As every passage rite, there should be fire involved. And they have pyro. They look a bit clumsy around it: one of them doesn’t manage to put his flare off, and there are discussions on when they should be used. “Let’s fire one now”, says one kid. “No, we should keep them for the goals”, answers the wannabe Capo. “How many do we have?”, asks a third. In the end, they have more than enough to put on a show.

One of them contacts me after the game, asking if I can share some of my photos. He writes deferentially, as he would address a school teacher. He tells me they started their group two months ago, after one year of planning.

In the wooden “buvette” decorated with fairy lights, bystanders look bemusedly at the display of the self-styled Curva Sud. These kids are probably filling the void left by a previous group, stickers around the Stadio Comunale still a witness to their presence.

We’re in a provincial town in Canton Ticino, six languages are spoken on the pitch: on one hand, this is Switzerland, on the other the guest team is called Kosova Zurich. FC Mendrisio, last in the league table, snatch an incredibly important win.

Their Curva Sud is there, stepping into the brave new world of “adult things” and its barren and concrete steps. They might be clumsy, as anyone in their early teens is, but they look so proud when the players go beneath them to applaud them. The adult world is recognising them, is recognising their role. Is recognising their place in the world.

©Damiano Benzoni/ Terrace Edition. FC Mendrisio vs Kosova Zurich.

©Damiano Benzoni/ Terrace Edition. Not so young FC Mendrisio vs Kosova Zurich.

You can find Damiano on X and Instagram: @dinamobabel and Bluesky: @dinamobabel.bsky.social

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