As the Pandemic in Europe at any rate, finally shows signs of easing, perhaps come the start of the new football season fans will be allowed back into stadia. Doubtlessly in limited numbers at the start, but hopefully things will open up completely, and those drawn up lists of places to visit, games to see etc can all start to be tackled. Let me bring four lesser known Italian clubs to life, everyone of them steeped in their communities, and while none might be on your “must do list” right now, maybe after reading this article you’ll be suitably intrigued and choose one of these destinations instead of Milan or Turin in the future. The real gems of any land usually are buried deep within its league structure.
RAVENNA
Even if there is no football to watch, but you happen to be in and around the Bologna area, a 90 minute train ride to near the Adriatic Coast, and a visit to Ravenna is a fabulous day out. There is much debate even to this day on where the city’s name comes from, but the Etruscans who lived here had a word for themselves, Rasna, and it’s thought to have originated from that source. Whether it’s right or not doesn’t matter, but it gives an immediate flavour of the depth of history to be found in the quaint streets of central Ravenna. The Venetians had a hold on the city for a relatively short time too, but as soon as you walk into the charming main square Piazza Del Popolo, you’d be forgiven for thinking it had been Venetian for a lot longer, as those iconic lions on plinths that adorn the more classic Venetian cities to the north can also be found here. With eight items in Ravenna on the World Heritage list, it’s a city of great treasures, especially for those with an interest in religious icons, but even if that’s not your thing, just admire the facades and streets of the city, and you won’t be disappointed.
The football team from Ravenna have been on the go since 1913, but its heyday was in the 1990’s when they were promoted to Serie B for the first time in ‘93, and although that visit was a short lived one season affair, they were back in the second tier by 1996, this time enjoying a five year spell at that level. Invariably, the club were stretching the budget to compete with much bigger clubs in Serie B which resulted in that particular relegation going beyond the third tier as the club went bust. From the ashes of US Ravenna rose Ravenna Calcio, which had to start life down in the 6th tier, the Eccellenza of Emilia Romagna region. They swiftly bounded through that league and Serie D in consecutive seasons to reach Serie C2, which was the fourth tier back in the day. It was a terrific start for the phoenix club, and after a two year pause at this level, they were off on another ladder or two, culminating in promotion back to Serie B in May 2007, just six years after their last appearance at this level, and four promotions. It was perhaps too steep a curve in such a short space of time, and not wishing to overextend like before, Ravenna ended back in the third tier the very next season. This is where the club has largely plied its trade ever since, aside from another couple of bankruptcy issues that has seen the club demoted and bounce back, and they are now known as Ravenna FC.
I saw the latest reincarnation of Ravenna play at home on the penultimate day of the 2017/18 Serie D campaign when a 1-0 win over fellow promotion chasing Delta Rovigo in front of a very healthy 6,000 plus at the Bruno Benelli stadium meant a point the following week would see them back in the third tier. That objective was duly achieved, but since getting back up they have largely struggled. At the end of the 2019/20 campaign they were in the relegation play off places upon the calling of the league, and had to bring the squad back for a two legged fixture with AJ Fano months later to fight for survival. Fano needed an aggregate win to stay up, and the Marche side duly won both games thereby relegating Ravenna. However, with the usual round of bankruptcy issues in the league, Ravenna was given a reprieve. They didn’t exactly grasp the chance with both hands, but a small miracle in the 92nd minute winner on the last day of the most recent season got them off the bottom in dramatic style, sending Arezzo down and themselves into the Play Out play-offs once more. This time around they will need an aggregate win to survive. With rumours circulating that Sambenedettese are leading the “likely bankrupt brigade”, these play outs might well prove futile once more!
From the four clubs I am featuring in this article, Ravenna’s Bruno Benelli stadium is the best of the bunch. It really is a stadium fit to grace Serie B with it’s 12,500 capacity. The stand runs the length of the pitch, with shallow terraces supplemented by scaffold versions on all three others sides, as well as handily placed roof terraces/balconies allowing some to view the action without going to the game, a pretty handy vantage point these days!
The stadium is a 20/25 minute walk from the railway station, not a difficult route, and online maps will guide you easily, but don’t just come to Ravenna for a game, lavish in the splendours of this magnificent city too if you can.
Montevarchi
The very last day of the Serie C regular season was a very dark one for Tuscan football, with four of the five teams automatically relegated coming from the region! Two were relegated without the safety net of a Play-Out as automatic demotion kicks in if the gap is 8 points or more to the clubs above, and second/third bottom clubs Pistoiese and Lucchese both joined Livorno in next season’s Serie D courtesy of this excellent rule. In the town of Montevarchi, news of the demise of the last of that quartet, the aforementioned Arezzo, would have brought about some rye old smiles to the rossoblu fans of the local team as these clubs have a big time rivalry. Every corner of the world is full of footballing rivalries, but in Tuscany the history of each town, where they were almost operating as separate states many moons and river ago, seems to translate into an even more deep rooted angst when it comes to local football rivalries. Put it this way, on my visit to the well appointed and picturesque Gastone Brilli Peri stadio, the visitors from the Tuscan seaside resort of Viareggio, might only have had a handful of fans for an oddly timed mid afternoon, midweek game, but they relentlessly taunted The Eagles of Montevarchi fans with endless singing of “Arezzo, Arezzo”. The irony here is that while Arezzo are down to Serie D, Montevarchi are top of there Girone at that level, and looking handily placed to step up! The world would be deprived of this South East corner of Tuscany’s biggest rivalry again, but if they do end up going up, Arezzo can console themselves with matches against Siena, another clash in the “serious rivalry” category!
We have crossed the mountains between Emilia Romagna/Marche and Tuscany, headed south to reach Montevarchi. It is on the train line south of Florence, but if you want to get off here, don’t get a high speed train bound for Roma or further afield, and if it’s an Inter-City, make sure it stops in Montevarchi. Arezzo is the next stop down the line, and if you did by accident watch the name Montevarchi slip by through the window of a speeding train, jump off here and get a Regional train one stop north. That said, if you are looking for culture ahead of calcio, Arezzo beats Montevarchi in every way in the world of beauty/history stakes. Arezzo is not just one the real gems of Tuscany, but all of Italy. By contrast, Montevarchi is just a regular town, it has nothing to make you walk around and marvel at, but the good news is, the stadium is just a 10/15 minute walk from the station.
Montevarchi Calcio Aquila 1902, to give the club its full title have never really set the heather on fire, the third tier is as high as they’ve ever achieved, and a 7th place finish was a good as it ever got in 1998/99, followed by a millennium horror show and relegation. It was the last time the club graced the third tier, but if they can see off the fashionable eating/night out area of Roma, Trastevere they’ll be back there for 2020/21. Despite only moderate success, it isn’t a bad CV for a team from a town of only 24,000 inhabitants. The stadio Brilli Peri is named after a local Grand Prix driver who won the Italian Grand Prix in 1925, and it is on the edge of the town affording fabulous views of the rolling hills of Tuscany from the main stand side of the ground. The 7,200 capacity is more than adequate for Serie D and any potential step up, but briefs might be in short supply if they ever come up against Arezzo again. Like all small clubs, it’s a superbly friendly place, with a bar serving cold beer, freshly heated tasty bites and souvenirs just inside the ground. The club’s red and blue striped shirt ticks boxes for the Inverness fan in me, and I have been keeping an eye on their scores since I saw them beat Viareggio 2-1 in 2018.
PONTEDERA
We have headed north now, but arriving in Pontedera we are still in Tuscany, a town tucked in between Empoli and Pisa on a west bound train from Florence to Livorno. The chat online doesn’t try to mask the notion that Pontedera is anything other than an industrial town, but to label it thus does seem a little harsh, as it is a clean, well appointed little town. Unlike Montevarchi, it does have one claim to fame, one to set Italian motorbike fans off into a misty eyed glaze, Pontedera is the home to the Vespa!
The local side US Citta di Pontedera had been a backwater side for 100 years before they experienced the joy of promotion! If this is a team that does things by lengthy, solid steps, Serie C might have them around for a considerable number of years to come! Pontedera are one of those clubs who rarely challenge the top positions, but conversely, they rarely struggle either. If resolutely mid-table is your thing, Pontedera are a team for you! That said, mid-table, as low as 10th of 18 teams gets you a slice of promotion play off action, and they have qualified for three of the five occasions of this exciting newish end of season marathon that has been added to third tier roster. The play-offs haven’t exactly gone very well thus far for them, knocked out in round one on the first entry, and last term, having finished 4th when the season was called, they chose not to get the gang back together for another crack, despite their league position affording them a bye in round one. This term they’ve made it again, but lower down the league, and when they head to play Albinoleffe in round one, they’ll need to win the one off tie, as the Italian system rightly rewards a higher placing in the early rounds of these events. Extra time and penalties only come into the equation when they have nibbled the 28 entrants down to the last four. Prior to the semi-final stage, a draw is all that is needed if you finished higher! Bizarrely Catania have played 8 play off matches in the four seasons of the previous play off campaigns, and never lost, but never been close to winning the competition either.
Given near neighbours Pisa obsess their rivalry with Livorno (a fixture that won’t come around again for a while now), and Empoli on the other side have probably never been in the same league as Pontedera, it might be left to Pianese a short distance away, but a league below presently, to act as the local rival. The Stadio Ettore Mannucci has a modest 5,200 capacity, essentially a reasonably sized terrace opposite a stand, with no viewing areas behind either goal. I oddly ended up watching football here two nights in three days! Carrarese, a venue I am still champing at the bit to visit, were doing stadium alterations and chose to move a Monday night fixture to Pontedera. Two days later Pontedera were hosting, which was a slight anti-climax second visit as the Carrara fans had come south in huge numbers and were much more vociferous and boisterous than the altogether more sedate Pontedera fans, complete with a thirty minute floodlight failure before their game could start.
The stadium is a thirty minute walk from the railway station, remarkably far away in a town of just 29,000 people, but it is a very straight and easy route. Having done it twice, albeit a few years ago now, I could easily do it tomorrow without the need for any guidance.
Casale fbc
The last of our hiddens gems might not beat the city of Ravenna in terms of a place worth visiting, although Casale Monferrato has a lot more to offer than Montevarchi and Pontedera, but it knocks the spots of the trio in terms of football history. The curious addition of “fbc” to the local club name is worth dwelling on for a second, as foot and ball are classed as two separate words, and in English too, giving the team the full name of ASD Casale Foot Ball Club. Casale Monferrato is in the Piemonte region 60 kilometres east of Turin, just north of Alessandria, by coincidence and no surprise, the main rivals of Casale.
The club’s kit is an iconic one, all black with a big white star as the crest, hence the nickname, il nerostellati (the starred blacks). It is a shirt I added to my collection during this pandemic enforced shutdown for fans, just one of a few purchases by way of endeavouring to support wonderful small clubs, as well as in this case, getting my hands one one the great shirts of calcio.
Founded in 1909, Casale were straight into the thick of the development of the game in Italy. In beating Reading in 1913, they were the first Italian team to beat English opposition, which merely acted as a springboard to winning the Italian Scudetto the following season, thrashing Lazio 7,3 on aggregate to clinch the title. Hitting your pinnacle just five years after foundation probably means everything that has come thereafter is anti-climactic, but from a town of just 33,000, as professionalism came along, staying amongst the big boys became increasingly hard. That said, no one can ever take that title away, and they can lord it over Alessandria when their paths converge. Casale are in the 4th tier these days, and after a bad start to this trying season, they’ve pulled away from any threat of relegation, allowing a chance to re-group and go again next season. Reaching Serie C in the modern era is probably as high as Casale could achieve, but while the official capacity of their Stadio Natale Palli is just 4,000, I am astonished at that figure compared to Pontedera in particular of our quartet, as this fabulous stadium is a proper old school venue. Unusually for Italy it has a sizable roofed terrace (or shed as we’d call it) running the length of the pitch opposite a fine mainstand, a seated area that rightly celebrates the successes of yesteryear. Casale is another wonderfully friendly club.
Unlike Montevarchi and Pontedera, Casale Monferrato has more to offer than just a football option. In Piazza Mazzini, the central hub of the town, it affords the opportunity to enjoy fine Italian architecture, as well as enjoying local cuisine, wine and/or beer in the relaxed surroundings of a wonderful non-touristy, but splendid town. The stadium is another good thirty minute walk from the railway station, this time a slightly tricky route, so use your phone app guide to whisk you to one of the fabulous lower league venues in Italy in my opinion. I know in Italy clubs tend to register lower capacities, and go with what they’ll need so as to avoid undue need for stewarding and taxes, and that is certainly the case at Casale, as I am sure it could easily house double the 4,000 figure if required.
So there you have it, a quartet of teams and towns that might not have been high on your must do list, but maybe one or more has moved up a notch on your roster. One of the lovely things about calcio below Serie C level is you don’t even need your passport to get it, just pitch up, buy a ticket and in you go! For the ticket collectors amongst you, the tickets are more quirky at any given club and not standardised as per requirements for information gathering, bar code entry etc of the leagues above. While football almost feels too regimented with bureaucracy higher up, the joy of the simple pleasure of just buying a ticket on the day and enjoying a game are alive and well in Serie D or below. The fans are more characterful, with the venues less conformist to the stereotypical all seater grounds cropping up everywhere these days. If you like your football with character, the lower leagues of any land will always deliver.
Football Adventures with James Rendall 