At about 1.30 last Saturday morning, Alberto Mu (24), along with his brother-in-law Silvestro and his sister Serena, left the Gildo nightclub in central Rome. As the group made their way to their car, Alberto told the others to go ahead while he went to buy cigarettes nearby. On his way to the cigarette bar, he came across four Englishmen, presumably football fans in town for Saturday's World Cup qualifier between Italy and England. The had bottles in their hands and were talking loudly. When he approached them, one of them shouted at him, "Italian shit". To which Alberto replied, "No shit, win."
At that point, one or more of the Englishmen hit Alberto in the face with a bottle, so badly damaging his left eye that he will never again see with it. That is Alberto's story, as he told it this week.
Even if his story were not true, what is certain is that by mid-Saturday morning at least 12 English soccer fans had been arrested, five on drunken and disorderly behaviour charges and seven on assault and damages charges following an overnight Milan-Rome train journey.
What is also certain is that by late Saturday afternoon, English and Italian fans (with the latter arguably more culpable in this case) engaged in a series of running fights in and around Rome's fashionable shopping precincts off Piazza Spagna, Via del Corso and Piazza del Popolo.
By the end of the weekend, we had a final "battle count" that read: 31 arrested (27 English, four Italian) and 79 injured (34 English, 10 Italian, 35 security force personnel).
Such violent weekends, however regrettable, are par for the course when it comes to "hot" games - soccer matches involving fans with a track record for violent behaviour. Over the years, such games have infrequently featured English fans - from the Heysel stadium disaster of May 1985, with its 39 Juventus fans trampled to death as they fled rioting Liverpool fans, to the suspended Ireland versus England friendly at Lansdowne Road in February 1995.
Such an historical memory, as well as the incidents last Friday night and Saturday morning, form the background to the police charges on English fans at the Olympic Stadium during Saturday night's game. To an Italian policeman, an English fan is a "hooligan". In the heat of the moment, that policeman is unlikely to adopt a reasonable approach.
Television images of the crude treatment handed out by Italian police to some of the 11,000 to 12,000 English fans have gone all around the world. One suspects that it is those images, more than anything else, which have provoked a surprising howl of English protest this week.
Leading the protest, admittedly in a tone of moderation, was the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, in the Sun. Supporting his protest, rather less moderately, have been the former sports minister, Mr David Mellor, and sections of the British popular press. (With characteristic literary flair, the Sun on Monday called the Italian police "Pigs".)
The Prime Minister suggests that the Italian authorities ought to have learned a lesson from Saturday's events, arguing that organisational shortcomings led to some English fans being too close to Italian fans.
Mr Blair is probably right. Lazio football club and Ventana Incentive House, the only ticket purchase points in Rome, may well, wittingly or unwittingly, have sold tickets to touts who then sold them on to English fans. However, if the Prime Minister knows a foolproof way of controlling all ticket sales, then he is not so much an able politician as a wizard.
Perhaps English sensitivity about the Olympic Stadium incidents is linked to English soccer's concern over the negative impact those incidents may have on its hopes to host the 2006 World Cup. Given the excellent job done at last year's Euro '96 championships, English soccer is entitled to host that World Cup.
What neither English soccer authorities nor English Prime Ministers are entitled to do, however, is to appear to condone violent fan behaviour. Whether provoked or not, the English fans in the Curva Sud were violent, while many of them "had drink taken".
What both English soccer authorities and prime ministers must realise is that, however unfair it may seem, the average Roman today greets the arrival of English soccer fans with all the enthusiasm his predecessors reserved for Alaric, King of the Visigoths, when he arrived to sack the Eternal City in the first decade of the fifth century.
Those of us who follow soccer professionally know the vast majority of English fans cause no trouble. But the average Roman, or indeed average citizen of the world, does not know this. To them, an English soccer fan is simply a hooligan, an undesirable.
Perhaps in an attempt to improve the English fan's international image, Prime Minister Blair might use his new-found editorial influence with the Sun to persuade that paper and others to desist from the sort of jingoistic, racist and offensive big match build-up indulged in last week. (The Sun, with further literary flair, kindly offered readers the Italian translation for "F . . k Off, Ref").
After all, given its current excellence, the English team has no need of such help.