September 16, 1984 was the day that Diego Armando Maradona discovered how some parts of Italy’s population feel about Naples. On this first match day of the 1984–85 season, his new club Napoli was playing away in the northeastern city of Verona — home to Romeo and Juliet, but also a center of Italy’s postwar “economic miracle.”

Making his Serie A debut, Diego immediately realized what he had gotten himself into: “They greeted us with a banner that helped me understand right away that the battle Napoli faced wasn’t just about football; ‘Welcome to Italy,’ it read. It was North against South — the racists against the poor.”

The Lega Nord — the party today headed by Matteo Salvini, which made its name with its anti-Southern racism — would emerge only a few years later. But in the stadiums of Northern Italy, it was an established tradition to welcome the South’s biggest club with banners praising Mount Vesuvius — and chants calling Naples a city of “cholera” whose residents “needed a wash.”