About 30 minutes after Como had beaten Modena 1-0 in an Italian Serie C1 (Third Division) game on Sunday, two of the match protagonists, 26-year-old Como midfielder Massimiliano Ferrigno and 33-yearold Modena midfielder Francesco Berotolotti, came across one another in the long corridor that leads from the press room to the dressing-rooms at Como's Sinigaglia stadium.

Both men had been in the press room to give their versions of a key moment in the match, namely a second-half scuffle that had seen Ferrigno sent off, following an animated difference of opinion with Bertolotti which resulted in the latter being knocked to the ground.

In front of reporters, they had continued their combative duel, with Ferrigno accusing Bertolotti of "taking a dive", while his Modena rival insisted that he had been elbowed in the face. On a normal day, that would have been that, just one of thousands of similar incidents, soon forgotten in the fast-moving foot-biz world in which men like Bertolotti and Ferrigno are, in any case, only bit actors, far removed from the multi-millionaire status of the Batistutas and Beckhams.

Sadly, this was not a normal Sunday. As we write, Francesco Bertolotti is fighting for his life in a hospital in Lecco, near Como. In a moment of apparent folly that he will doubtless long regret, Ferrigno struck out at his rival as they walked back to the dressingroom. Bertolotti was knocked out cold by his fall and then plunged into an immediate and life-threatening coma after his head hit the corridor's marble floor. Early yesterday morning, the Modena player underwent four hours of surgery in an attempt to halt brain haemorrhaging.

Hospital spokesmen yesterday said the player was still in a coma, describing his condition as stable but adding that it was too early to be certain that he was out of danger. Furthermore, the surgeon who operated on Bertolotti also said it would take several days to establish what, if any, brain damage Bertolotti suffered during a period of respiratory arrest immediately after the fall.

Fortunately - if he pulls through - Bertolotti has a normal life outside football to return to. At the age of 33, he has already laid plans for his post-football future, taking a job as a sales representative for Immergas, a company that makes domestic boilers of the sort found in almost every Italian house and the company that sponsored non-league side Brescello, for whom Bertolotti played more than 300 games before moving to Modena.

Such an "insurance" policy is vital in Italian soccer's lower echelons, where an average Third Division salary is worth £20,000 per annum - not much for a married man like Bertolotti, with two young children. Bertolotti had no difficulty predicting that he would soon need such an "insurance policy". What he could hardly have predicted was that his part-time soccer career would one day threaten his life. Meanwhile, while he fights for his life in hospital, his attacker, Ferrigno, is at the centre of a state prosecutor's inquiry, and the Como player has been charged with grievous bodily harm and failing to help a person in distress. Ferrigno, furthermore, is almost certain to be suspended by the Italian Football Federation, pending an inquiry. Needless to say, the Bertolotti incident has prompted a mini-avalanche of chest-thumping and moralising along the "Football is Sick" lines. Players, coaches and federation officials have all vigorously condemned the incident, arguing that on-pitch tensions, polemics and incidents should all be forgotten immediately after the final whistle.

Such nice aspirations, however, stink just a bit of hypocrisy. In a developed world in which the media-driven business of sport puts its major protagonists under ever greater pressure, Corinthian attitudes of fair play and sportsmanship are oft-times overlooked. Experienced Brescia defender Alessandro Calori gave a rather more honest appraisal of the Bertolotti incident yesterday:

"It's difficult to offer an opinion about an incident like this. On the pitch, you don't always manage to keep a grip on things, you react in ways that later you regret. People should try to understand what it feels like to take the pitch with 70,000 spectators watching you. The rule is that you keep a hold of yourself, but it's not always easy . . ."

Not always easy, it would seem, even half an hour after a match played in front of 6,000 spectators.