There was no soccer played in Italy this past weekend. The big stadiums where the pros play, even the bumpy fields used for youth games were quiet, deserted.

The silence was a mark of respect for Filippo Raciti, a police officer killed last Friday evening while on duty outside the Angelo Massimino stadium in Catania, Sicily.

During the second half of an all-Sicilian game between Catania and Palermo, tear gas crept slowly across the playing field. The players began to gasp for air, feeling the effects of the gas in the crowd. The referee ordered everyone off the field; half an hour later, they returned, and the game finished with a 2–1 win for Palermo.

The soccer was over for the evening … but not the tear gas. The trouble had started outside the stadium, and it got worse as fans poured out into the streets. Very quickly, the police were involved in running battles with groups (or maybe hordes? or was it gangs?) of hooded, violent youths. Hours later when things cooled down, more than 100 people had been injured. And Filippo Raciti was dead.

A death that has shaken Italy. A death that caused all the weekend’s soccer games — from the pro Serie A down to youth games — to be canceled. A death that forced the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) — which has overall control of sports in Italy — to call its first-ever meeting on a Sunday. And a death that produced public condemnations from Pope Benedict and Prime Minister Prodi.

The Catania Duomo was packed yesterday morning for Raciti’s nationally televised funeral, with thousands more Catanians watching the service on a big screen in the piazza outside. The soccer VIPs and government ministers in attendance flew out immediately afterward for an emergency meeting in Rome. Sports Minister Giovanna Melandra, promised that the government would “put in place a series of important measures with immediate effect.”

Yet the rulings announced yesterday did not seem to match the sense of urgency that had built up over the weekend. All pro clubs have been told to make sure their stadiums comply with existing security laws. If not, no spectators will be admitted, and their games will be played in empty, padlocked stadiums. Restrictions were also announced on the sales of tickets to visiting fans, and the police were given more freedom to arrest and hold suspected hooligans — the ultras as they are called.

The ultras have caused much trouble before — not just getting into skirmishes with opposing fans and with the police, but also turning on, even attacking, players of their own teams when the results are not going their way.

Incredibly, some clubs have been intimidated into granting unofficial recognition to bands of ultras, supplying them with tickets, even transportation. All of that has to stop, according to the new regulations.

Alongside the outrage at Raciti’s death, there was despair. Antonino Pulvirenti, the president of the Catania soccer club, announced he would resign: “I do not feel that I can continue after what happened.”

It first appeared that Raciti had been killed by a small bomb thrown into his car. But the pathologist’s report said Raciti had died from a liver hemorrhage, as though he had been struck by a heavy object.

The police — and not the visiting Palermo fans — seem to have been the chosen target for the ultras. According to Renato Papa, a prosecutor in Catania, the fans from Palermo left the stadium unmolested: “The ambush was not against Palermo fans — it was against police officers.”

In various parts of Italy a rash of anti-police graffiti appeared, even including the sinister English “All Cops Are Bastards” acronym, ACAB.

The silence surrounding the stadiums on Sunday hardly reflected a country in turmoil. How long the stadiums will remain closed is at the center of a raging argument, with calls for forceful action coming from all sides. Sergio Campana — leader of the pro soccer players’ association — called for a halt of at least a year, while the soccer league’s president Antonio Matarrese said games should resume: “We are pained, but the show must go on. Soccer must never shut down.”

A view that was not shared by Interior Minister Giuliano Amato, who warned: “The fans are risking the possibility of never seeing soccer again, of being without soccer forever, with stadiums empty and barred.”

Doomsday, then — but hardly a credible scenario. Italians devote too much time and energy (and money) to soccer for it to simply disappear. Surveys have shown 14 million Italians (of a total population of 58 million) go regularly to watch games, and the sport is calculated to rake in $7.8 million a year. The government benefits, too — there is legal betting on games to the tune of some $40 million, of which $4 million goes to the government.

The end of calcio — the Italian word for soccer — its reduction to nothingness, is frankly ridiculous. But there is an air of the absurd haunting calcio right now.

Last summer, a major scandal engulfed the sport as its top club Juventus was found guilty of manipulating referees. Yet in the midst of that upheaval Italian soccer pulled off a miracle in Germany when the azzurri, the national team, reached the pinnacle of the world’s most popular sport by winning the World Cup.

A massive achievement that should have been reflected in burgeoning popularity and prosperity for the sport. Yet here we are, just seven months later, and calcio has assumed the cast of a villain, no longer the nation’s pastime, but a threat to national serenity, even to Italy’s identity.

“We’re talking about a cancer, not a seasonal flu,” said Corriere della Sera. From Campana came the demand that “the culture must change … it’s time to reflect, we cannot lose life for absurd reasons.”

What incenses most critics is that the problem of violence in and around soccer stadiums has been evident for years, but that little has been done to step up security. Roberto Donadoni, coach of the national team, says: “Too often we talk about taking proper and decisive action. It’s time to stop all that and take concrete action.”

The critics put the blame on the antiquated state of many Italian stadiums. They point to England, with its modern all-seater stadiums and its ubiquitous CCTV systems as the example to be followed — a colossal irony, as it was the English who virtually invented soccer hooliganism in the 1970s.

For the moment, the ban on soccer, decreed by soccer federation president Luca Pancalli (another irony — he is the man brought into clean matters up after last summer’s scandal) remains in place. But, with the whiff of tear gas barely dispelled, there came the expected statement from the soccer federation: The new regulations made it likely that games could be resumed the coming weekend.

If they are, the authorities will face the first big challenge to their seriousness. For Gazzetta dello Sport reports that only four of the 20 Serie A stadiums meet the safety norms. Among those that don’t is the fabled 83,000 capacity San Siro in Milan, home to AC Milan … the club that is owned by former Prime Minister Berlusconi.