Many a visitor to Italy will doubtlessly have taken a peek at the northern classics, Venice and Verona in the prosperous Veneto region. Shakespeare, who never actually sampled its splendours in person was undoubtedly taken by its beauty from tales of others and set many a play in the area, The Merchant of Venice as well as Romeo and Juilette being just two, both set in the aforementioned cities. An equally well known Shakespearean play is The Taming of the Shrew, but perhaps less known is the setting was Padua, more commonly known as Padova. The football team did once play in the Anglo-Italian Cup, and right here was a ready made headline if they had ever beaten Shrewsbury Town!! Alas such exploits in England didn’t include Gay Meadow! Oscar Wilde was also enchanted by the city writing a play The Duchess of Padua.
Padova calcio, like many of the Veneto clubs has largely failed to establish itself amongst the Serie A elite, but that doesn’t mean to say as a club they haven’t enjoyed their moments in the sun. The heyday was undoubtedly in the’50’s, culminating in a club record high finish of third in the top flight in 1958. They were relegated in 1962, and I guess no one could have foreseen that it would be 32 years before they would scale the heights to Serie A once more following a play off win versus Cesena in ’93/94. Like Benevento this season, Padova had a miserable start to life back at the top table, but they found a second half of the season just as Crotone did last season, and stayed up following a play off with Genoa. The highlight of that campaign was a 1-0 away win against the mighty Juventus! Alas, lessons weren’t learned properly and they were back in the second tier after the following seasons dismal effort. Relegation from Serie B in 2013/14 set about an all to familiar catalogue of financial meltdown as happens to many clubs in Italy sadly. They effectively went into liquidation, but immediately from the ashes a “Phoenix” club rises in this case under the name Biancoscudati Padova, who participated in Serie D the following season. They gained promotion that year, and as luck would have it, one layer of the Italian league structure was disappearing so they jumped from the fifth to third tier, and promptly changed the club name to Calcio Padova spa. The club spent three seasons in Serie C, and clinching the automatic promotion place back to Serie B last summer, but no thanks to a 1-0 loss I witnessed in Trieste. Serie B is Padova’s “safe” level, but they have the stadium and a fan base to grace the top flight once more, but the return to the second tier has been hard, and an immediate relegation is not an impossibility, sadly.
Some famous names have worn the white shirt of Padova, and my own personal favourite was one of the few “stranieri”, Goran Vlaovic who played 50 times for the club in the two years in Serie A in the ’90’s. He was still a Padova player when he ran out for Croatia in Euro ’96, where I would see him play at Hillsborough and The City Ground! In that same Padova team was one of the USA’s most famous sons Alexei Lalas too! Demetrio Albertini who would go on to have an amazing career with AC Milan was a young star at Padova, together with Angelo Di Livio, ex Juve and who most famously went down to the fourth tier with Fiorentina, staying with them to guide the hurpling giant back to Serie A. The highly talented barn door that was Cristiano Lucarelli came through Padova too, but perhaps their most famous son was Alessandro Del Piero, who started at the club as a youth, and played in the ’91 to ’93 period for the first team before going onto have an illustrious career with Juventus. The most well known ex-Padova player still playing will be Stephan El Shaarawy who is now with Roma, having played for AC Milan as well.
Stadio Eugeneo has been home to Padova since 1991/92 but they would only move fully into the new stadium at the start of the 1994/95 campaign when Serie A football was back in town. It can hold 34,420, an extraordinarily high capacity for such a club, but given the previous pedigree Padova is a club with high ambition. More often than not the capacity is restricted to 18,000 with only limited areas opened, but even such a capacity is still too high for Serie B matches unless they can get nearer the promotion zone next season. It has been used for rugby Internationals and concerts when the capacity was stretched to its fullest. It is a bland modern concrete construction with no redeeming features. The two end terracing are unusually small in comparison to the side stands, and one of these usually hosts the visiting fans. It feels cold and distant viewing the pitch with its running track around it, and I know the Padova fans are not all that enamoured with the stadium, a bit like Ancona’s Stadio Conero, it is too far from the city. At least at Ancona you can get a train to Stadio Conero, whereas Padova’s Stadio Eugeneo doesn’t have such luxury. Indeed, the local bus services (N0.11 from outside the railway station-See how to get there section) doesn’t even take you right to the ground! You still have to alight and walk a good bit to reach the stadium!
Padova Calcio’s previous home, the stadio Silvio Appiani, was just minutes from the famous Prato della Valle square (See city guide) through it’s southern exists. The stadium is still there today oddly, but the football team has long decamped to the more modern municipal stadium on the outskirts of the city. It was a funny old place, it had one stand that went on up into the sky for what seemed like forever! It totally dwarfed everything else on the other three sides. I first saw Padova beat Cremonese 1-0 in 1988 in only my second game in Italy, but what were the chances that scorer that day had also been on the score sheet for Cesena in my first game the year before, Fulvio Simonini! I was also in the Appiani for what I thought was the penultimate match at the old stadium, a 3-1 win versus Reggina May’91. Two weeks later a seven goal thriller, a 4-3 win versus Barletta would have been a fitting send off. Agonisingly Padova missed out on promotion to Serie A that season finishing 5th with four going up in those days! The doors on Appiani would eventually close with the last game three years later in May 1994 a tame 0-0 draw with Palermo! It brought the curtain down on 73 years of football at the stadium.
Padova is a brilliant base to stay and go to see calcio anywhere in Veneto, with clubs larger and smaller dotted within easy reach of the city. As a region Veneto’s clubs have rarely bothered the elite of Serie A, save Hellas Verona’s glory days in the ’80’s culminating in them incredibly bagging lo Scudetto in 1984/85. The more recent legacy of the biggest club in the region has been a volatile shifting between the top two leagues, and last season resulted in another relegation to Serie B. A decade or more of underachieving has seen Hellas fall from Verona’s top team, yielding as the region’s top performing club to local rivals and once minnows Chievo, the infamous Flying Donkey’s, who consistently punch above their weight. However, they got embroiled in an inflated transfer scam with Cesena, and the smacked hand points deduction has seen them bottom all season! A third Verona club Virtus Verona are now in the professional league structure too, having missed out on promotion from Serie D in the play-offs a couple of seasons ago, they fulfilled their dream last term, but they are struggling to gain a foothold, and could be back from whence they came in a few months! Verona is less than an hour West from Padova by train, and is a major tourist hub as the fabled Romeo and Juilette tale has seen to that, but has much to attract visitors aside from a wee balcony!! In Piazza Delle Erbe you can truly feel life from another era.
Halfway between Verona and Padova you will find the delightful city of Vicenza, full of 16th century gems from Andrea Palladio’s architecture and a real treat of a day out in itself. As a football team Vicenza have been a great servant of Serie A. Paolo Rossi and Roberto Baggio once wore the famous red and white stripes of Lanerossi, but those days are long gone and the club are presently struggling at the bottom end of the third tier, a situation that haunted them once before. I saw then in 1990 on the last day of the season when the town turned out in a capacity crowd for a must win match versus Prato to avoid a further relegation to the 4th tier. In the summer they won a “play out” with Santarcangelo, but were technically bankrupt. They survived in the third division by virtue of the Chairman of Bassano Virtus from relatively nearby buying them out and moving his team, lock, stock and barrel from Bassano to Vicenza, and they are officially now known as Lanerossi Vicenza Virtus, but play in red and white et all. Bassano have lost their club! I will see Vicenza for a third time in early March when Imolese are in town!
In the opposite direction, heading East, and a mere 20/25 minutes away is the unique city of Venezia, a place that needs no introduction, it is simply one of the jewels of the world, let alone Italy! Venezia Calcio has had a checkered history of fluctuating leagues, albeit a few Serie A days on their CV, but more concerningly they have always been a team hampered by endless bankruptcy issues. Perhaps Venezia have stumbled on more stable days as they have found an American-Italian owner Joe Tacopina, who has great ambition for the club, and were are performing well under Pippo Inzaghi in Serie B following promotion a couple of last seasons ago. They will eventually vacate their wonderful island stadium, Pierluigi Penso Stadio, moving to a modern stadium on the mainland on the edges of Mestre at Tessera adjacent to the airport, but this seems to be endlessly delayed and Pippo lost patience, moving on to Bologna, but he was sacked recently.
Mestre is a large town in itself just five minutes on a train across the lagoon from Venezia. It certainly is the “cheaper” alternative to staying on the island, if a little seedy in places and it is a town with nothing worthy of drawing a tourist other than a place to sleep. It’s purpose in life is to serve Venezia, and by it’s proximity the football clubs have a checkered history of merging and collectively going bust through modern history. AC Mestre were alive and well in their own right until last summer, and despite having a purple patch in their history, playing for the first time in many a season in the third tier this term, stubbornness may have been there downfall .The stadium in Mestre was not up to sufficient standard to host Serie C games and instead of sharing with Venezia it is interesting that they elected to play in Portoguaro, another 36 miles East! A classic case of once bitten perhaps, but the costs and lack of support saw them go bust!
Treviso is a fine Veneto town within an easy days travel. By train you would need to change at Mestre, and another 25 minutes or so will see you arrive. A bus or a car would potentially be more direct from Padova as Treviso sits up a little up from the Adriatic. The club from Treviso once graced Serie A where doubtlessly they were punching well above their weight, but they fell into bankruptcy issues and they are presently playing in the Veneto Regional Promotion Division, the 6th tier. Professional Rugby has found a home here with Benetton Treviso hosting Pro 14 games in the city too.
Cittadella is a quaint town actually in the Province of Padova, about twenty minutes north by train, and while the local club, Cittadella are a considerably smaller club than Padova, they are very well run and have long established themselves in Serie B and on occasion they have been knocking on the door of Serie A, but unlike Chievo they have never made that final step up, yet! Given Padova’s recent financial issues, Cittadella have been the sole representatives of the province in the higher leagues for a few years now, but with Padova back in Serie B this term, the derby is back! That said, it is a small time affair a wee, modern rivalry in the eyes of Padova fans especially, a bit like Sassuolo playing Reggiana, where traditionally bigger Reggiana would more relish playing Parma or Albinoleffe playing Atalanta, who may share the same stadium, but Atalanta fans would only ever salivate ahead of one of the most “high risk” Italian derbies when playing Brescia. Venezia, Verona and Vicenza, the three V’s would all be bigger games for Padova.
I endeavoured to catch a game in the Eugeneo in April 2017, Padova were playing my beloved Ancona, and it had been 26 years since I had seen a game in Padova after all! It was a game scheduled for the last weekend of April, but was moved to the Friday night which was still an achievable kick off as I was in Italy in time and with my oldest Italian buddy Andrea, who jolly conveniently lives in and supports Padova, my transportation to the out of town stadium wasn’t going to be an issue. Alas the whole fixture just seemed to have a curse attached as the game was moved at very short notice to the Monday evening, by which time I was sitting at home and watched an entertaining 2-2 on the then Lega Pro channel online! Andrea did take me to the stadium for the first ever time, and I got to have a look around the little museum of the clubs proud history as well as capture images for this article courtesy of a kind groundsman who’d left the gate open!!
The gradual regeneration of some of the old guard of Italian football is good for the game there. These well run small clubs who have been occupying the lower places of Serie A and the upper reaches of Serie B might start to fall back with the rise of Venezia, the resurgence of Parma and the return of Lecce, Livorno and Padova automatically to Serie B at the end of last season.
Football Adventures with James Rendall 