A lot of Italian clubs come with the name of the city in the title. Inter, Juventus, and Atalanta are the obvious exceptions. Entella and Sampdoria in B as well as, both from Liguria, then we have the curiously named Juve Stabia. Half the name in the title, but unless you are an avid fan of calcio, you might not be familiar with where they play. Castellammare di Stabia is home. The town can be found around the bay of Napoli, on the coast, looking almost directly across from the capital of the Campania region itself.
Castellammare lies next to what was once the Roman settlement of Stabae. It acted as the seaport to Nuceria, modern-day Nocera, Inferiore, and Superiore as they known these days. The Duke of Sorrento, the Napoli Royal family, even the Bourbons, dunked in for a time, lording it over the locals. It’s the latter civilisation that left some intriguing buildings here. If you are interested and have time, up off the coast sits a museum, Reggia Quisisana, an old building in its own right, but housing many artefacts, especially from the Bourbon era.
While the national rail carrier Trenitalia will provide services to Torre del Greco, Torre Annunziata, and Pompei, Castellammare and Sorrento are just that but further round the bay, and their train operations are dealt with by Circumvesuviana. It’s a narrow gauge line, so the carriages etc cannot be bought from the regular rail businesses. It is an extremely busy service, as Ercolano, Pompei, and Sorrento are potentially the three biggest tourist attractions in the Campania region, that’s before you factor in commuters and just locals needing transportation along the line. While Circumvesuviana provides a fairly frequent service, the paying public, local, or tourists are getting very poor value for money. The carriages are old, and the seating (if you can get one) is very uncomfortable moulded plastic. The stations are a mess, and they have no online ticketing. There is no provision for disabled people, no first class option. Yet, they will happily continue to sell tickets to the point of people getting crammed in. One poor young lady fainted on my return trek.
Castellammare is about 50 minutes along the tracks from Napoli Piazza Garibaldi, a station found under Napoli Centrale. At the far left of the corridor below Centrale is where you can purchase your ticket before heading another level down to catch your train. Platform one is always the Sorrento train, which is the end of the line. Stabia Scavi station, which isn’t even on the posters on the trains, is obviously a new station. This is your football stop, a mere 10 minutes maximum from the stadium.
The next station along is Castellammare di Stabia, much nearer the coast, and if you have time to see the town, this is the better option, with a 25 to 30 minute walk, largely but gently uphill from here to watch a game. The town has a grander feel, less claustrophobic the closer to the sea you go. The views across the bay towards Napoli from the esplanade or by the waters edge are stunning.
With a population of 63,000, Stabia is a reasonable size. It is densely populated like Torre Annunziata and Torre Del Greco. All three fit the moped/bike image of the area depicted in the TV drama Gamorrah, with the streets festooned with the two wheelers. All three are distinctly working towns.
Running a football team at a high level in a region full of clubs is no mean feat. The Napoli factor further complicates the maths, the one side in the region that straddles across the fiefdoms, which are still alive and well in Italy. Fans of Juve Stabia wouldn’t nip over to Torre Annunziata to watch Savoia, or vice versa. The ill feeling between the clubs can best be highlighted by the plight of Sorrento, whose Stadio Italia in the town is deemed inadequate for Serie C. Instead of groundsharing nearby, none of the clubs would help, and for the fifth year on the trot, they are travelling crazy distances to Basilicata playing home games in Potenza, now Picerno too. It’s a good two to three hour trek one way!
As mentioned, Napoli are the exception. You will find fans of the club even beyond Campania, many of whom will migrate to the Maradona stadium to watch their team. I always recollect in the brilliant film Cinema Paradiso, set in Sicily, Napoli was seen as the Big Apple. While it might seem like a point of movie humour, it is also pretty close to the truth.
Juve Stabia have been doing rather well lately. Last season was a real high point. Indeed, I cast an eye over them for the first time last term, not once but twice. They played out a very entertaining 2-2 draw at Catanzaro, where only a red card probably stopped them holding onto a two goal lead. Then, in May, they really put the cat amongst the pigeons beating Modena 1-0 away in the first round of the promotion playoffs, which they had reached for the first time.
That led to a semi-final two-legged encounter with Monza. Very early on in the home leg, they were 2-0 up and good value for it, but somehow Monza pulled it back to level before the end. Despite going down 2-1 in the return, they never sat back and never made life easy for the Lombardia club. The portents were good for building something even more solid, or at least that was perhaps the perception.
In truth, Juve were falling down without a sound even before the season was out. Earlier in the campaign, they had been placed into “special measures” monitoring due to the club having been infiltrated by mafia, or the Camorra are they are known in Campania. If you are thinking, I have read that before, my tale of Crotone last season was the same story, albeit in Calabria, where the mafia are the ‘ndrangheta.
Both clubs have started this campaign in their respective leagues with points deducted, and definitely at Stabia (and more than likely Crotone too), it’s a fluid situation. In the case of Juve, I read that allegedly, a sum of €5m has gone missing, and understandably, the locals aren’t happy. Just ahead of my visit, those at the top in the club have all gone, leaving one man at the helm. Five million might be pin money at the top end of world football these days, but to a small town side, punching above its weight, it is a travesty. Whether more points will be deducted remains to be seen, but while seige mentality will get you so far, more points docked, and it could be the catalyst to a downward spiral.
The Romeo Menti, a name you might have come across previously as they share it with Vicenza, is a well-appointed stadium with a compact but trim capacity of 7,642, complete with an artificial surface. Romeo was a Vicenza boy but played for Stabia at the end of the war. Sadly, he would lose his life with his Torino teammates when their plane crashed into the Superga above the city.
In town for this one were Sud Tirol, from Bolzano up north in the Alto Adige, which is the name they used to be known as a club back in the day. They had started the season well, a contrast to scrapping to survival last season, having played out two attritional goalless scraps with Bari. They survived the playout courtesy of finishing one place higher. A win at the Menti, and they would go second, while Stabia knew a win would get them off the bottom.
On a glorious afternoon, the crowd was in a good voice. Well, the home fans were, as a mere 10, had made it down from Bolzano, and they didn’t even sit together. Italian football, like everywhere, needs to bow to ambitious owners, etc, but when they don’t have an avid fanbase, the country needs the bigger support pools higher up the pyramid to generate the atmosphere and revenues.
The ten would have plenty of time headed north to dissect this woeful display from Sud Tirol. Abject doesn’t even cover it. I watch a lot of Italian football, as you know, but aside from Spezia getting thrashed 5-0 at Como many years ago, this was right up in the highest echelon of pathetic. Juve might only have led one nil at the break, but the opposition were offering very little. After the break, the one-way gig became endemic. It might have ended only 3-0, but four whacks of the Tirol woodwork helped keep things sensible.
Sud, whose kit felt as if it had run in the wash, a dirty white, fashioned their one effort right on the hour mark. The force field around their goal was still holding, and they might have equalised from that glorious opening! However, the frustrated forward petulantly reacted after missing out on the rebound off the keeper, and the ref brandished an immediate red. As the players all ran to recreate the battle of the handbags briefly, the Tirol manager lost the feather in his cap, banished with a red too, for talking out of turn.
Stabia banged in two against a beleaguered opponent, and the crowd loved it. They eased off but still managed to strike the frame a couple more times. On this display, they should be absolutely fine. A further points deduction, though, might alter things.
I feel I should call out the notion that wheelchair users can enjoy a game here, they can’t! I know this because the two in the stadium were in front of me. They had to be lifted up steps to the first walkway. The fence is too high, and this is where the poor elderly couple were plonked! In this day and age, pathetic.
Leaving the stadium, utter chaos was playing out, as no one stops the traffic going in either direction, and with no pavement, humans, bikes, and cars don’t all fit into a tight steet. Despite the crush, I was back at the Stabia Scavi station for the first leg of getting back to Salerno in good time. Upon its arrival, to my surprise, the stand room only gig had some breathing space until the hoardes joined at Pompei.
You can’t beat a backpack constantly bumping into you, not, but through all the bumps and with no room to read, I reflected on what had been a very enjoyable day in Castellammare di Stabia. A working city, a no frills place, but with a beating heart, and right at its centre is their beloved Juve. I wish them well through the trials and tribulations to come as they look to get the club on tierra firma, and safety as a Serie B club going forward.
