There’s an old idea that your football club should be inherited: the place you were born, the team your family supported, the ground you grew up with. But sometimes football finds you somewhere else entirely.

For Neal Sutherland, that place was Palermo. What began with a chance encounter on his honeymoon in 2008 eventually became something much bigger. In the summer of 2025, Neal and his wife left Northern Ireland to start a new life in Sicily – with season tickets in the Curva Nord Superiore at the Stadio Renzo Barbera part of the plan.

It’s easy to understand the romance. Palermo is beautiful, chaotic and intoxicating: historic markets, faded grandeur, street food, Mediterranean heat and a football club playing in one of the game’s great colour combinations – pink and black, traditionally representing the sweetness of victory and bitterness of defeat.

Now following Palermo through Serie B, Neal shares his story, a season spent living the football life he once watched from afar and how it came to be…

In football, sometimes you chose, sometimes you are chosen, and other times it can be absolutely random, sliding doors, happenstance. For me and Palermo Football Club, then Unione Sportiva Città di Palermo, it was the latter.

It was September 2008, and I knew who they were. I knew the beautiful pink and black shirts. I knew about their ‘big-man-little-man’ strike force of a young Uruguayan forward called Edison Cavani, and the force of nature that was Fabrizio Miccoli. But this knowledge would’ve been nothing without a chance conversation with our waiter, at our honeymoon hotel, on the Via Roma, in Palermo.

He bought me a beautiful pink and black scarf, and begged us to change our train and our plans so we could go with him to the Curva Nord, to watch the rosaneri play Roma in Serie A. We couldn’t do it, everything was booked to head to beautiful Taormina, so he got us drunk instead. Very drunk. The next day in a bar 230m above the Ionian Sea, we watched them beat the giallorossi 3-1, with the 3 goals coming from THAT strikeforce.

The stadium was jumping, and I was drenched in regret. These were the opulent days of Maurizio Zamparini as owner; a managerial merry-go-round; and the incredible scouting network that would go on to uncover players such as Paolo Dybala, Javier Pastore, Franco Vasquez etc. I vowed to one day sit in that stadium and experience that electric atmosphere.

It took eleven years to make that happen, and with the possibility of promotion back to Serie A hanging in the balance, my wife and I sat in the Stadio Renzo Barbera, watching an enthralling 2-2 draw against Cittadella, screaming every syllable of Ilija Nestorovski’s name when he scored. For Palermo, it wasn’t enough. And instead the summer brought absolute turmoil . A reinvention was required and a drop into Serie D. 

This never deterred me, and after the pandemic, a winter trip to the city revolved around a 0-0 draw with Ternana for my birthday. Serie C, and not a single goal, but I loved every moment. The following summer, we had the chance of a stadium tour, and a visit to the museum.

Then a life changing moment and a dream converged, and my wife and I were able to emigrate to Sicily last summer. We knew immediately that we had to get season tickets, and it had to be the Curva Nord Superiore, as close as possible to the ultras, and all the fans who are the fervent heartbeat of this football club.

The first match in the intense August heat was the friendly against mighty Manchester City, with Erling Haaland, and the rest of the stadium, agog at the tifo of the Gallagher brothers from Oasis, adorned in the pink and the black. Despite the 3-0 loss, the curva never stopped singing, jumping, and shouting. An atmosphere truly like no other, with 35,000 fans, at an Italian second division side. 

Naturally, throughout the year we were given a lot of quizzical looks, many wonderful questions (“ma perché!?”), and a lot of hugs. We got to witness a hellish 0-0 draw against Venezia. We saw unforgettable back-to-back 5-0 home wins in November. We had teenagers taking my phone to help us write down the lyrics to the songs. We got soaked to the skin in February. We jumped many times to prove we were not Catanese. We landed rows away from our seats when Antonio Palumbo scored THAT early goal v Catanzaro. But, again it wasn’t enough. Even Super Pippo wasn’t enough. But we had the year of our lives. And we’ll be back next season to do it all again.

Alè, alè, non mollare mai. Forza Palermo per sempre. 

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