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Sampdoria, an Italian soccer club that plays in Italy’s Serie A, made a gruesome discovery inside of a package that was delivered to the team’s headquarters this weekend.
According to Reuters, a severed pig head was sent to the club along with a threatening letter addressed to former club president Massimo Ferrero and current vice-president Antonio Romei.
The letter read, “The next heads will be yours.”
Sampdoria released a statement calling the incident a “serious act of intimidation that took place this morning at the company headquarters in Piazza Borgo Pila” and said that “any type of attack on a member of the Board of Directors represents an attack on all its members, on their work.”
Authorities were called to the scene.
⚠️ Amenazas en la Sampdoria: envían a la sede una cabeza de cerdo pic.twitter.com/bCJddaHdio
— Mundo Deportivo (@mundodeportivo) February 25, 2023
It was just the latest incident of intimidation directed at Sampdoria amid fan unrest with the direction of the club.
One month ago, a blank bullet was delivered to the Sampdoria headquarters. That delivery came with another threatening message directed at Ferrero and previous club owner Edoardo Garrone. It read, “This time it’s blank, next time it will be real,” according to Rai.
Sampdoria — which is based in Genoa — is currently in the relegation zone, six points behind Hellas Verona in the final relegation spot. Sampdoria has not been relegated from Serie A since May 1999, before returning to the top-flight league in 2003.
The club’s next match is against fifth-placed Lazio on Monday.
