Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Italian pitch invader, Mario Ferri Falco, who flew LGBTQ rainbow flag and Save Ukraine, Respect For Iranian Women t-shirt during Portugal vs Uruguay in Qatar has been released with no consequences.
Fabrizio Romano wrote: “The pitch invader during the Portugal-Uruguay match, Italian guy Mario Ferri, has just announced that he has been released with no consequences. #Qatar2022. (Read More Here).
This pitch invader during the Portugal-Uruguay match was holding a rainbow flag.
The front of his shirt read ‘Save Ukraine’ and the back read ‘Respect For Iranian Women’.
Mario Ferri might be a bit of an unknown figure outside of the Italian public scene. Ferri, who’s commonly known as “Il Falco” (The Falcon) by those close to him, earned some notoriety a few years back not for being a footballer, but for his lighthearted antics as a globe-trotting pitch invader. He would travel from Italian to European and South American venues — notably the World Cup — and storm onto the field while wearing a Superman shirt. Once on the field, he would engage with players and rile up the fans. He would later become friends with some of the players on the same pitch he invaded.
But this is not a story about an Italian pitch invader-turned professional soccer player who’s looking to cause more trouble. This is actually a story about the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and how this person dropped everything on a dime to travel to the border of Poland and help the Ukrainian refugees escape their homeland.
“As we speak, I’m in Poland, in a city called Medyka, close to the border with Ukraine,” Ferri told CBS Sports. “Yesterday we brought 60 women to this side with a bus …”
Ferri is currently under contract with United Sports Club in Kolkata, a second-division side out of India. At the beginning of February, the 35-year-old footballer came back from India after the league decided to stop the competition until June after COVID-19 cases rapidly increased in the region.
When he arrived in his hometown of Pescara, he couldn’t stay much longer. “I have a friend here [in Poland] and he told me what was going on. I’m concrete person, and what I saw in India really touched me. People there are suffering so much. I needed to give something back even in a totally different context. So I flew to Poland, rented a car and drove to the border with Ukraine,” Ferri told CBS Sports.
What Ferri has been doing is something special: He drives families of refugees that are headed to the border to seek asylum and then comes back to find others that are seeking for help. Most of them are women and children because the majority of the male population isn’t allowed to flee the country as things stand.
“At the beginning, I started with an association that deals with refugees here and I’m still working with them, but then I noticed that many Ukrainians were texting me on Instagram,” Ferri revealed. “I thought that social media were only for useless things, but now I have a totally different view of it.
“Instagram in some ways is helping so many people now in this situation and I’m grateful that I can do something for them. I receive around 30-40 messages per day, and also from people in Italy that tell me that they have some relatives and family members here that need help here. This is how it works.”
Ferri spent years with the goal of invading several venues around the world. Now he has another goal: He wants to be the first soccer player to ever play professionally in all five continents once he leaves the Polish-Ukrainian border. With Europe, Africa and Asia already crossed off his list, he’s targeting a move next year to the United States and to Australia. “In one year, I’ll make it,” a convinced Ferri said.
Ferri is taking this new and unexpected role very seriously: “I do it on my own. I pay for everything and I want nothing back. I almost had a fight the other day because I saw a man asking money for doing what I do. It’s unacceptable, people are desperate here and there are few that want to make a business out of it. The man who ran onto the field during the match between Portugal and Uruguay at the World Cup in Qatar , and was arrested immediately afterwards, was released, he confirmed on his Instagram account. His name is Mario Ferri , an Italian, an amateur football player, but above all an activist and humanitarian who not so long ago helped Ukrainian refugees, animated them as they crossed the border with Poland.
The video of that video, where he takes care of the mood of refugees, women and children in the bus, and helps them, has been updated since last night, since the whole world now knows who it is.
Mario’s selection did not make it to the final tournament, but he found a way to “represent Italy” in a good light, the truth is that his messages go far beyond nationalism, they go much further than that and concern vulnerable groups, which could be read on the shirt in which he ran onto the field.
On the front of the blue T-shirt, under the recognizable superman emblem, the message “salvation for Ukraine” was written, on the back it also had a message that has been current in recent months and concerns the situation in Iran. With the slogan “respect for the women of Iran” , he once again drew the world’s attention to the difficult position of the fairer sex in this Muslim country, where women suffer from the regime’s strict hand only if they do not wear hijabs over their faces.
Mario’s third message was symbolically in his hand, a rainbow flag in the middle of a country where the LGBT population is marginalized, practically disenfranchised and subject to the strictest sanctions. This truth-loving Italian didn’t forget about them either, he completed his appearance at the World Cup with a colorful flag and there is no doubt that he garnered a lot of sympathy because of the messages he sent. (Read More Here).
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