Let me briefly introduce you to the Tour De Tat project. Once a month, I head out to some of Europe's top football cities on the hunt for football treasure. I never know what I’m going to find, but I make it my mission over a long weekend to fit in as much thrifting and crate digging as physically possible and unearth some amazing football tat unique to each city I visit. I then document it all and bring some of it back home so people can get their hands on it for a reasonable price.
As well as treasure hunting, these trips also give me the opportunity to meet up with the fellow football nutters, artists, and collectors I’ve made friends with over the last few years. We'll grab a beer, they show me their favourite places, and if I’m lucky, I get a chance to acquire some items from their personal collections. It’s probably best we get going so you can see what I mean. Welcome to Tour De Tat: Milan.
A weekend in Milan is on every football supporter’s bucket list, and the city is packed with vintage stores, flea markets, and souvenir shops that all cater for fans hoping to bring back a relic to remember their pilgrimage. The timing of my trip might have been better, though.
October in the north of Italy can be notoriously wet, so the meet-ups I had planned were looking like a valuable lifeline as a lot of the flea markets I had marked in advance were in danger of being a washout. This is the risk you run when you engage in the murky world of tat buying and selling. But I had everything crossed as I boarded my EasyJet flight that the skies would remain clear.
After touching down late on Friday night, my first port of call early Saturday morning was Fiera di Sinigaglia—the oldest flea market in Milan and the only one open for business every week. It takes place every Saturday, and it’s a tat lover’s dream: I walked past stalls selling everything from antique moka pots to Persian rugs to cacti and vinyl records. Each item is fair game—the limits are only your curiosity and how willing you are to haggle.
The first couple of items that I picked up after a lengthy bartering period were handmade, which I loved because it usually means they're exclusive to the city I'm visiting. You can’t beat football folk art, and this homemade Inter Milan rosette from the sixties and framed, tinfoil, AC Milan painting with a gleaming silvery-red devil kicking a football got me off to a flyer. I always appreciate the time and effort that goes into someone creating something tangible to celebrate a cup final or a scudetto, something that has its own history.
