Florence. Purple Pride
There is no derby in Florence. Only one team plays there – Fiorentina, a side whose dramatic recent history has overshadowed its glorious past, made up of victories which at times threatened to break the dominance of the big Milan-Turin axis. Fiorentina won the championship in 1956 and reached the European Cup final a year later, losing only to Real Madrid. They then finished second four times in a row, but always by fairly large margins. This was a team constructed by Fulvio Bernardini, one of the most talented and original characters in the history of Italian football. Player, journalist, intellectual, coach, manager, Bernardini remained at the top of the game for two generations and took two provincial clubs – Bologna and Fiorentina – to rare scudetto victories. Bernardini’s record with Fiorentina was exceptional – one championship, three second-place finishes and one fifth place. The second Fiorentina scudetto was the work of ex-Napoli-star-turned-coach Bruno Pesaola, who kept the fiery Brazilian Amarildo under control just long enough to hold off the challenge of Cagliari in 1969.
Fiorentina were never to win another scudetto, but they came very close in the late 1970s and early 1980s with a team built around a stylish, loyal and unlucky midfielder: Giancarlo Antognoni, who suffered a series of horrific injuries. Only some extremely questionable refereeing denied the viola (the purple one) the championship in 1982, and an intense rivalry with Juventus was born. Fiorentina produced a series of superb young players in the 1980s and 1990s, none more so than fan idol Roberto Baggio, whose sale to Juventus in 1990 provoked a riot. Fiorentina replaced Baggio with Gabriel Batistuta, another hero who was loyal enough to play a season in Serie B for the club. With Giovanni Trapattoni on the bench, Fiorentina finished a creditable third in 1998–99. Then, total collapse. Club president and film producer Mario Cecchi Gori died in 1993, and was replaced by his fake-tanned son, Vittorio, who had political ambitions and an empty wallet.
In 2002 Fiorentina went bust, and were sent down to Serie C as punishment after finishing bottom of Serie A. Cecchi Gori was arrested on various charges, including drug use. The team suffered the intense humiliation of losing its name and original symbol – they became Florentia Viola for a year. New owner Diego Della Valle, who had made his money from a fashion company called Tod’s, was forced to buy back the Viola symbol and name at an auction. After rebuilding with a young team, the squad was ‘re-called’ to Serie B in 2003. The sense of injustice felt by Fiorentina fans and players was heightened by the huge debts declared by other big clubs, who were not relegated as a consequence.
The roller-coaster history of Fiorentina in recent years saw the club caught up in the calciopoli scandals of 2006, after qualifying for the Champions League in the previous season, thanks largely to the goals of Luca Toni. Nineteen points were docked from the team in the 2006–7 season (reduced to 15 on appeal) and they also lost their European place. Nonetheless, the team played admirably to pull themselves out of trouble and qualify for the UEFA cup.
The Provinces. Bologna, Cagliari, Verona
Only three provincial teams have won championships since 1945. Bologna, under Fulvio Bernardini and with midfielder Giacomo Bulgarelli as their charismatic star, won a controversial playoff with Inter in 1964. Since then the club has been through ups and downs, including going bust and being sent down to Serie C in 1993. After that humiliating moment, the club worked its way back up to Serie A, where it settled into mid-table respectability, before slipping back to Serie B in 2005.
Cagliari’s period of glory was in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and was based around the unique talent of Gigi Riva, who led the whole island into days of wild celebration after the 1969–70 championship. Provincial Verona, finally, won an unexpected scudetto in 1985, with a team lacking in stars apart from the Danish striker Preban Elkaer. Most commentators attribute that victory to the subtle management skills of a coach born in the working-class Milanese neighbourhood of Bovisa, Osvaldo Bagnoli.
Since Sampdoria’s victory in 1991, it has been increasingly difficult for smaller teams to mount a serious challenge. Money talks in the age of pay-per-view and the Champions League, and just four clubs have shared the championship in the last fourteen years – Juventus (6), Milan (6), Roma (1) and Lazio (1). The massive financial difficulties of the Rome clubs by 2004 seemed to point to a three-horse race from here on in: Juvemilaninter. Inter were the odd team out in this equation, a big, rich club who kept failing to win anything at all.11 Nobody else could get a look in. The unpredictability of the championship, which occasionally threw up romantic stories of loyalty, team spirit and shock results, had been killed off by the corporate nature of the contemporary game. Two football analysts have argued that this trend is part of a general shift towards something they call ‘neo-football’. In contrast to the game that became popular in the 1930s and boomed again in the 1950s and 1960s, neo-football is above all a TV and business phenomenon. It is also detached from space and territory and increasingly globalized. The domination of the same big clubs – which are now brands marketed across the world, largely through internet and digital technology – guarantees a world-wide audience and also contributes to the decline of the national teams. In the neo-football world, only two or three teams are ever able to challenge for the championship, money talks and the rest are just bit-part players on a globalized world stage, where Milan players are household names in China and Japan and football is played 365 days a year.12
Naples. The Longest Wait
As the fourth-best-supported club in Italy, Napoli have been starved of success ever since their formation in 1926. After some good seasons under William Garbutt in the 1930s they briefly threatened to win the scudetto in the 1950s, when ship-builder Achille Lauro pumped money into the team, and then occasionally in the 1960s and 1970s. Napoli’s fans have always had a soft spot for charismatic foreign stars. The team’s heroes over the years have usually been forwards – the flamboyant Paraguayan Attila Sallustro in the 1920s and 1930s, the Brazilian Luis Vincio in the 1950s, Omar Sivori and José Altafini in the 1960s. Nobody, however, has ever come close to the adulation received by the greatest player ever to play for Napoli, and the only man to bring a championship trophy to the city: Diego Armando Maradona.
The King. Maradona and Napoli. 1984–1991
In the still desperately poor Spanish Quarters of Naples, groups of small boys drive motorbikes at high speeds through the tiny streets. Here, you can still see damage from the 1980 earthquake and the population density is amongst the highest in Western Europe. On one wall, towards the top of the quartieri, there is a huge mural. It depicts a man with black curly hair and a blue Napoli shirt. The mural is so large that an (illegal) window only takes up part of the face. It is peppered with bullet holes – local criminals used it for target practice, it appears.13 The man is instantly recognizable, and not just to locals: Diego Armando Maradona – the King of Naples. Maradona played for Napoli between 1984 and 1991.