There is a reasonable chance that by the time these words are read, Andrea Berta may no longer be alive.

Berta, forty-nine, is imprisoned in Italy for the murder of his acquaintance and former partner Antonio Blocco, thirty-six, whom he stabbed in the neck on September fourth, twenty twenty-four.

Both men were Inter supporters, both served as leaders within the club’s ultras organization, and both earned enormous sums as mafia influence deepened inside fan groups and around Italy’s stadiums.

They profited from illicit ticket sales, collected shares of parking revenues, and controlled the lucrative flow of goods inside the stadium—including extensive drug transactions.

Now Berta has chosen to become a state witness.

He may live long enough to describe to authorities the disturbing fusion of organized crime and Italian football, or his testimony may help uproot only part of this entrenched corruption.

In any case, his time is short.

In the unwritten codes of prison and the criminal underworld, turning state’s evidence is a far greater crime than murder.

The mafia does not forgive.

It seeks nothing less than death.

Recent reports in the Italian press quoted a prison guard saying, “He sits in his cell crying every minute he is awake”.

Berta, a repeat offender with convictions for violent and drug-related crimes—at least two of which took place at San Siro—became the leader of Inter’s ultras in twenty twenty-two, immediately after the previous leader, Vittorio Boiocchi, was shot dead outside his Milan home.

Berta, long considered Boiocchi’s right-hand man, assumed the role through a hierarchical process modeled on criminal organizations.

In September twenty twenty-four, he and Blocco were sitting in a car near the Testudo boxing hall, a favored ultras gathering spot.

A dispute erupted; Blocco drew a firearm and shot Berta in the leg.

Berta pulled a knife and slit Blocco’s throat.

In court, he claimed self-defense.

Unlike Berta, who fought his way into the mafia’s ranks, Blocco was born into a Calabrian crime family.

No one was meant to touch him.

Once in prison, Berta immediately understood that the mafia sought vengeance—and that its soldiers inside the prison would be eager to carry it out.

His only hope of survival, or of salvaging some form of criminal legacy, was to start talking.

He began speaking the moment he entered prison in November twenty twenty-four.

He detailed to prosecutors his role as leader of Inter’s northern stand, the deals brokered inside San Siro, and the violence planned within the stadium and carried out beyond it.

To investigators’ astonishment, he also solved the murder of Boiocchi, then sixty-nine, the historic ultra leader of the Nerazzurri.

According to Berta, the two gunmen on the motorcycle who killed Boiocchi on October twenty-ninth, twenty twenty-two—just after his release from prison—had been hired by Berta himself, who refused to relinquish control of the organization.

“Blocco’s family had nothing to do with it,” Berta told prosecutors.

“We organized everything”.

His testimony led to the arrest of six ultras with mafia ties, including the shooters Pietro Andrea Simoncini and Daniel D’Alessandro.

Italian prosecutors do not treat these killings as ordinary murders, but as mafia-style executions.

Berta paid fifty thousand euros to eliminate Boiocchi and secure control.

When Blocco demanded a larger share of the profits from merchandise sales at San Siro, Berta killed him with his own hands.

Yet beyond the murders, Berta painted a far broader picture.

According to his testimony, Inter’s ultras—along with those of Milan—functioned as a violent enforcement arm of Italian organized crime, amassing enormous profits from stadium-linked businesses: ticketing, parking, concessions, and narcotics.

His statements have already led to the arrest of dozens of Inter and Milan supporters accused of mafia affiliation and criminal activity carried out on its behalf.

These testimonies reveal how the mafia recognized the vast financial potential of football: the cash from stadium commerce, the control of stands, and the power that comes with them.

It sought a share—either through extortion or by taking over the operations directly.

To achieve this, the mafia embedded soldiers and commanders throughout the ultras’ ranks.

This development had an unintended side effect: it pushed out many of the far-right or neo-fascist elements historically dominant in Italian ultras culture.

But the money circulating inside San Siro was immense, and the stadium became one of the most coveted power bases within the criminal world—offering easy profit with minimal risk, along with the prestige of belonging to football’s inner circles.

That money flow, however, created greed.

Parts of the stands became drug marketplaces.

Greed bred jealousy.

Jealousy, and the ambition for money and power, bred violence.

Leaked portions of Berta’s testimony portray a violent psychopath who evaded law-enforcement efforts for nearly two years.

Despite covert surveillance, authorities were unable to stop his activities or expose the full scale of stadium-based crime, and were even unable to enforce his ban from entering San Siro.

Investigators say Berta did not care about football at all.

He mocked dedicated supporters who came to sing for the team.

“I’m only there to make money,” he told prosecutors while describing how he ordered the beating of a seventy-five-year-old vendor who had long sold Inter scarves outside the stadium but refused to pay protection fees.

Another investigator said Berta dismissed the murders he committed or ordered, and the violence he oversaw, as “mistakes”.

On his Instagram account, now deleted, investigators found a photo of Boiocchi captioned, “My idol”.

In May, a Milan court sentenced sixteen ultras connected to San Siro to prison terms ranging from two to ten years for mafia-related offenses.

Luca Lucci, leader of Milan’s southern stand, received ten years.

Among the accusations was his alleged involvement in the killing of Enzo Anginelli, another Milan ultra.

Yet despite these convictions, Milan prosecutors remain unsatisfied: none of the defendants was convicted of extortion, threats, or protection-money schemes.

“The court caught minnows,” said one prosecutor.

“We are after sharks and whales”.

Berta himself was sentenced in May to ten years, reduced because he agreed to testify.

Milan prosecutors now face a race against time—and against mafia forces operating both inside and outside prison walls.

Just as Berta never cared about Inter or its supporters, but only about the money he could extract, prosecutors do not care about Berta personally.

“They only want information on mafia operations,” he sobbed to his wife in a recorded prison call.

“No one cares about me at all”.