Tucked in on the Eastern edges of Lombardia, Mantova is one of the unsung gems of the region. That said, Lombardia, and neighbouring Veneto are both teeming with sumptuous cities (as well as every region of this beautiful country), but while Mantova might not be amongst the most well known, it is truly a fabulous place to visit, and of course a fine place to watch some football too.
I am sure when you are looking to book a trip to watch football in any country, the driving force isn’t based purely on the notion that a city is worthy, especially when the local side find themselves further down the pyramid. I am doubtlessly in the minority, but for me the real stories of football are found in the lower leagues, and regular readers will know the lesser lights are my staple for being tales to the magazine. When a city has a big history, and the local club has once been amongst the elite, these aspects add value to my enthusiasm, and Mantova ticks all these boxes.
The city is around 2 hours by train South East of Milan, and about 45 minutes South of Verona. It is very unusually surrounded on three sides by sizable bodies of water, courtesy of artificial lakes, which gives it a more coastal feel than you would expect so deep into a landlocked region. The lakes obviously doubled up as a significant moat for the once ruling Gonzaga family, whose heavily fortified and imposing Ducal palace is the closest construction to the apex of the lakes, where the modern day road bridge might have been the mother of all drawbridges back in the day.
With a population of around 50,000, Mantova is not huge, but its city centre is an absolute delight. The city has been bestowed with a number of awards in recent times, adding credence to its value in Italian history. In 2008 the Centro Storico (the old town) was awarded the frequently feted UNESCO World Heritage Site. This was followed by the Italian City of Culture in 2016, and the very next year it shared the European Capital of Gastronomy with its Eastern Lombardian neighbours Cremona, Brescia and Bergamo.
If Parmesan comes from a little further south in Emilia-Romagna, its equivalent around these parts is known as Grana Padano. Now I am sure some cheese experts can immediately tell the difference and get sniffy over the whole thing, but I for one can’t detect any difference. If you are in Mantova and want to immerse yourself in the local cuisine, why not try one or both of its signature dishes. The most famous is Riso alla pilota, steamed rice with fried local sausage meat, while the other is known as Tortelli Di Zucca. This is essentially pumpkin ravioli, something you might never have indulged in before, but here it has an unusually sweet taste, courtesy of its secret ingredient, elevating its sugar content is broken pieces of amaretti biscuits. It is delicious, and if you sprinkle some Grana Padano on top and you are eating a little slice of Mantova. I thoroughly recommend it, and on many of my visits to the city, this dish is always part of my culinary requirements. If the weather allows, there are many restaurants in the centre with outdoor tables, so soak up the atmosphere of the city whilst indulging in its top nosh, you won’t regret it.
I previously alluded to the Gonzaga dynasty, rulers over Mantova and the surrounding area for many a year, akin to the Medici in Florence and Tuscany. Indeed, with the Este family doing likewise in Ferrara a little further South East, the family’s ruling vast swathes of Italy was pretty commonplace. I mention the Este in particular, because they potentially enlisted the help of the same architect to build their fortified castle right slap bang in the centre of Ferrara, where the man made moat is more of regular dimensions unlike Gonzago’s luxuriant lakes at Mantua. The name Mantua is the historical name of the city, whereas Mantova is its modern day Italian equivalent.
There was a lot of toing and froing over the centuries in the city’s history, with the Etruscans, the Romans, (who lost out to the Ostrogoths, whoever they were!), before resting under the possession of Boniface of Canosa for pretty much the entire 11th century. However, upon the death of Matilda, the last of the Canosa rulers, Mantua fought all and sundry to retain free commune status. They held firm for a while but more power struggles with the Guelphs and Ghibellines created a wee window of opportunity for a chap called Pinamonte Bonacolsi to seize power in 1273. In the midst of those behind the Bonacolsi rulers was an official known as Luigi Gonzaga, who in 1328, together with his family staged a public revolt, essentially a coup d’etat on the last Bonacolsi, Rinaldo. Things settled down after that, and for the next 300 years or so the Gonzaga ruled the city, even eventually easing their despotic ways to get with the times, embracing the renaissance that was sweeping Italy at the time. Mantua became a centre for renaissance art and humanism, an unlikely twist after all the goings on for the previous centuries. Of course the natural lineage of the family eventually ran out, and the Hapsburgs, the French and the Austrians all dabbled before it was finally pulled back into Lombardia as part of modern day Italy.
I dwelled on this tumultuous history in order to lead into just how much history is dripping from the piazzas and lavish buildings in the city centre. The main square Piazza Sordello is both enormous and beautiful with the walls and spires of many of the great buildings of Mantova housed in or around this square. The Palazzo Ducale right here partly on the piazza, although the lakeside view back towards this imposing structure is an incredible sight. This was the Gonzaga family spread, made up of a vast number of buildings, courtyards and gardens. Many a ruler may have come and gone over the centuries, but the Gonzaga’s will be the one forever associated with this amazing city.
Mantova is as flat as a pancake making it great cycling territory, and with the parklands near the football stadium being vast, and those lakes, it all allows for many forms of recreation in the vicinity. The down side in high summer with those lakeside nooks, they are made for harbouring mosquitoes and by autumn into winter time the city can very often be engulfed in fog.
You will be pleased to learn that the football team, while having an exceedingly colourful history, hasn’t been through as much tumult as the city itself, and that’s a relief. There has been a team in Mantova since 1911, but while it took them half a century to achieve it, the city was a regular in Serie A for 7 out of 11 seasons from 1961/62 to 1971/72. If you are headed to the well appointed Danilo Martelli stadium (capacity 14,884), take a wander around to the opposite side of the ground from the main stand, where as you head towards the home Curva from the street, the back of a wall has a mural celebrating this extraordinary team who were locally coined as “piccolo Brazil” (little Brazil). These really were the days to remember in Mantuan Calcio history. Today the clubs green and yellow second or third kit colours are a tipping of the hat to those giddy days of the “little Brazil” heroes.
The more traditional Mantova kit is white with a red sash, and aside from those 7 season’s in Serie A, the club has also enjoyed 8 campaigns in the second tier, Serie B. I have been to Mantova many times, but only once previously for football back in 2007, far enough back for an old dinosaur like me still to be behind on the cutting edge of technology, and on a most foul November day, I hadn’t even bothered to get my camera out. Rimini would head south with the points that day, but it was a game from one of those 8 Serie B campaigns. I would come across them again in late 2010 down at my beloved Ancona, also in B, where a tense tussle to avoid the drop saw a 2-2 draw played out, enough to save Ancona and relegate Mantova. Even under the tutelage of ex-international Michele Serena he was unable to save the Lombardia club. This being Italy however, it was a catalyst to both clubs being declared bankrupt, so essentially the tense afternoon at Del Conero had been a futile exercise, even if the game had been an entertaining joust. The slight irony was that Mantova, who had already been relegated, started again just one level down in D, whereas Ancona, who had saved themselves, encountered a worse financial meltdown and fell three leagues to the Marche Eccellenza.
That was the third time Mantova had fallen into bankruptcy with 1983 and 1994 previously added to unwanted CV before the 2010/11 meltdown. Amongst the clubs proudest scalps, despite all the gloom, was being the first club to beat Juventus in their Serie B season in 2006. Yet it was the season before, 2005/06 which saw the club hit its modern day high, finishing 4th in the league, and having seen off Modena in the Play Off semis, Mantova headed to play Torino in the second leg of the final 4-2 up. Alas a 3-1 loss in Piemonte saw Toro promoted based on finishing one place higher in the table. A cruel dashing of ambition for Mantova, but generally I always think clubs who finish higher should have some form of advantage.
It has been generally acknowledged amongst the Mantova supporters that the 2005/06 close shave with Serie A was as good as it got. The subsequent history of the club is a litany of third and fourth tier campaigns, with one last hiccup at the start of 2017/18 when they failed to meet the Serie C guarantee payment and were demoted back to Serie D with its present name Mantova 1911 SSD, as well as a new owner, Maurizio Setti, who also owns Hellas Verona, something that could become an issue should Mantova ever make it back to Serie A, or even B if Hellas continue their struggles this season. Salernitana, owned by the Lazio owner, encountered such problems when they reached Serie A, but in truth, right now, Mantova are a piece away from even dreaming of top table nibbling.
It took three seasons to get “i Virgiliani” (a club nickname which comes from yesteryear local Roman poet Virgilio) out from Dante’s ring of fire that is Serie D, even accumulating 83 points in the middle campaign only to be pipped by ambitious Como. Having finally made it back to Serie C last season, the club has just about kept its head above the relegation trapdoor, and when I headed out of the city centre headed for the Martelli, scoring goals was the team’s main issue, and I was concerned my third sighting of Mantova might struggle to be a victory yet again.
The stadium is named after a local chap Danilo Martelli who was one of many Torino players to lose their lives in the Superga air crash above Turin in 1949. It was built in 1940 during that era of mass Mussolini sanctioned construction with a view to encourage sporting endeavour. The Martelli, like Varese, Como, Fiorenzuola and Forli to name a few, were all built to be velodromes too. The remnants of that cycling track are still visible opposite the main stand beneath the presently covered Gradinata. It really is a fantastic venue, with the home curva an impressively high and large, quasi-permanent scaffolded terracing. Having been on such a gantry back in 1987 at my first ever game at La Fiorita, Cesena, I can imagine a full curva at the Martelli being a similarly bouncy experience.
The crowd might not have been vast, but being amongst the home fans on that curva was a fabulous experience as Mantova put on a bit of a show under the lights for a Monday night national TV audience and more importantly, those in the stadium. Pordenone from the Friuli region were in town, and they brought with them a modern day hero for Mantova, namely Domenico Di Carlo, who had plotted the club’s return to the third tier as boss before moving on. This was his first visit back, and it wasn’t to go unacknowledged, as Domenico was giving a presentation in front of the appreciative home fans ahead of disappearing into the away dressing room to plot an away victory.
Pordenone in recent seasons have been a well organised team that were on occasion knocking on the door of Serie A, but that star faded and last term they dropped back into Serie C. As the game started, one of the slightly curious sights at the opposite end of the ground was the factionalised support, with the relatively small visiting fans separated into two distinct groups. They were literally being kept apart, absolute madness at any club, but at a smaller one, even more stark. What exactly the issue is remains a mystery, but it’s not a good state of affairs.
As the game got underway it appeared to me that Mantova was going to have their hands full. Perhaps that higher level action last season was giving Pordenone a dangerous edge. Their passing was faster and the team inter-changing seemed more cohesive. Mantova might have at times ceded early possession, but gradually they played themselves into this game, and the Pordenone goalkeeper ultimately was the busier boy. The awarding of a free kick just outside the Pordenone box set up the opening goal with a fine effort over the wall into the net beyond the flailing keeper. A morsel of October dew on the ground had speeded the ball by a surprised keeper. Pordenone knuckled down and continued to look slick, and when they fashioned a fast paced attack, the red sea (well white largely!) parted, with the defence posted missing and it was all square just ahead of the turn.
Half-time can often change the dynamic of any game, and on this occasion it was Mantova who came out all guns blazing. They totally dominated the opening exchanges of the second period and deservedly took the lead again following some exquisite passing. Pordenone tried but they found the Mantova keeper in both fine and eccentric form. I use the latter description purely on the notion of his punching of the ball, where a British goalie would have gathered it in.
The final whistle was greeted with great scenes of celebration and rapturous applause, Mantova had scored two goals and beaten one of the favourites for the league title. Di Carlo might have brought his new charges to town, but he was sent away with a reminder of just how well his old club can still play. Three days later I was along the road at Vicenza for another league encounter where Mantova were the visitors. Although that result was to be a reverse of Monday result, Mantova had played very well, and on another night they might have won that game too, but having watched these two matches I was encouraged by their play and team spirit, and would act as uplifting performances for a friend, a Mantova fan who was fretting about the state of the squad, the ability to score goals and their chances of staying up.
Mantova is one of these cities that will continue to call me back, and if i biancorossi (white and reds) happen to be at home, I’ll be there. This is another city I would implore readers to give a chance to charm, it won’t disappoint.
Football Adventures with James Rendall 