Italy's first football championship

Four teams played three matches - all in one day

The Genoa team that won the Italian Championship
for the third time in 1900

Genoa became the first football champions of Italy on this day in 1898, winning a four-team tournament that took place in Turin in the space of a single day.

The event was organised by the newly-formed Italian Football Federation, set up earlier in the year after Genoa and FC Torinese had met in the first organised match played on Italian soil.

The two other teams invited to take part were also from Turin, namely Internazionale di Torino and Ginnastica Torino.  They assembled at the Velodromo Umberto I, where there was space for a pitch at the centre of a cycle track, with the first match kicking off at 9am.

Internazionale beat FC Torinese 1-0 in the opening game, after which Genoa defeated Ginnastica 2-1. After a break for lunch, the final kicked off at 3pm, Genoa winning again by a 2-1 scoreline, reportedly after playing extra time.  The trophy was presented by the Duke of the Abruzzi.

At least four members of the Genoa team were British, including the goalkeeper, James Spensley, a doctor from Stoke Newington in London who had arrived in the port city in 1897 to look after the health needs of British sailors, who regularly stopped off in Italy en route to or from India via the Suez Canal.

Spensley was one of the pioneers of football in Italy, having organised the historic match between Genoa and FC Torinese. He is held in high regard still in the city, where a plaque can be found on the wall of the house in which he lived.  Today, a section of the modern Genoa supporters' club calls itself Genoa Club Spensley.

Genoa, which even today is still registered as Genoa Football and Cricket Club, retaining the anglicised version of the Italian city name Genova as well as the reference to the very non-Italian game of cricket, tends to be accepted as Italy's oldest football club, although that claim is disputed.

A football match at the Velodromo Umberto I in Turin

Where Genoa was established in 1893, set up by British consular officials mainly to play cricket, there is some evidence that a club was formed in Turin two years earlier, this time by an Italian, Edoardo Bosio, who had become a football enthusiast while working in the textile industry in Nottingham.

Football was already a popular sport in England and Nottingham was home to the world's first professional club, Notts County.  Bosio formed a team called the International Football Club with players drawn from his workplace, although with no other teams to play against their get-togethers were essentially no more than informal kickabouts.

The crowd that witnessed Genoa's triumph was modest.  Around 50 spectators watched the semi-finals and witnesses to the final put the crowd at no more than 100, which was reflected in takings for the day of just 197 lire, the admission charge having been set at one lira, with some discounts.

Life in Italy at the time was tough, however. Food was in short supply and on the very day that the football champions were being crowned in Turin, bread riots were taking place in Milan, with as many as 400 rioters killed after the army was sent in to quell the disorder.

What's more, Italian sports fans were much more interested in cycling, riding and hunting. Football, which had existed in Italy since a game called Calcio Fiorentino was played during the Renaissance, would not catch on for a few more years.

The Italian Championship, though, was established.  The following year it was played over three days while the 1900 event spanned almost three weeks.  By 1910 it had evolved into a season-long league format, with nine teams playing each other home and away.

Genoa were the dominant team for two decades, winning six of the first seven championships, and then three times more until their run came to an end in 1925.

A view over the rooftops of Genoa towards the harbour,
with the tower of San Lorenzo Cathedral in the centre

Travel tip:

The port city of Genoa (Genova), the capital of the Liguria region, has a rich history as a powerful trading centre with considerable wealth built on its shipyards and steelworks, but also boasts many fine buildings, many of which have been restored to their original splendour.  The Doge's Palace, the 16th century Royal Palace and the Romanesque-Renaissance style San Lorenzo Cathedral are just three examples.  The area around the restored harbour area offers a maze of fascinating alleys and squares, enhanced recently by the work of Genoa architect Renzo Piano, and a landmark aquarium, the largest in Italy.

Travel tip:

The Velodrome Umberto I, which was briefly the home of the Juventus football club, was demolished in 1917 as the Crocetta district of Turin saw significant development. Buildings in neo-Gothic and Art-Nouveau style are now characteristic of this elegant area just south of the city centre, criss-crossed with tree-lined avenues. On the northern edge, near the Gallery of Modern Art, is an impressive statue of Victor Emmanuel II, mounted on a 39-metre column.

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Andrea Lo Cicero - rugby star turned TV presenter

Prop nicknamed "il Barone" now bona fide Knight

Andrea lo Cicero

Former Italian international rugby star Andrea Lo Cicero today celebrates his 40th birthday, having been born on this day in 1976 in Catania, Sicily.

The 113 kilo (249lb) prop forward played rugby for the Azzurri between 2000 and 2013, retiring with 103 caps.  At the time it was the highest number won by any player and Lo Cicero was only the second player in the history of the national team to win more than 100 caps.

He made his debut against England at the Stadio Flaminio in Rome in March 2000, as the Five Nations Championship became the Six Nations with the inclusion of Italy for the first time, and ended his international career in the capital, although this time at the Stadio Olimpico, in a 22-15 victory over Ireland in the 2013 Championship, in front of a crowd of 80,054.

Highlights along the way included an outstanding performance in the 2004 Championship, when Italy beat Scotland in Rome and Lo Cicero was named in the BBC's Dream XV.  Later that year he was the only European player selected for the Barbarians team that took on New Zealand, in which he scored a rare try.

He also played in three rugby World Cups, in Australia in 2003, France in 2007 and New Zealand in 2011.

In his club career, Lo Cicero represented Amatori Catania before moving to Rovigo and then Rome, where he was part of an Italian Championship-winning team in 1999-2000.

He played in France for the first time when he joined Toulouse in 2001 and, after three seasons back in Italy with L'Aquila, finished his career with his longest spell at any one club, playing for Racing Metro for six years, winning promotion to the top flight of the French Championship in 2009 and twice being named best prop in the Championship.

Lo Cicero acquired the nickname "il Barone" because his ancestry could be traced back to Sicilian nobility.  He became interested in rugby through an uncle, Michele, who also played for Amatori Catania, but showed early promise also in canoeing, giving up only because he developed such large leg muscles he could not fit comfortably into the canoe.

Having grown up by the sea, however, he maintained an interest in water sports and has become an accomplished sailor, competing in the 2013 America's Cup as a crew member for the Luna Rossa team.

Since retiring from competitive sport, Lo Cicero has established a second career as a TV presenter, drawing on his passion for gardening, restoring antique furniture and renovating houses.

He hosts a Sky Italia show called Giardini di Incubo which can be roughly translated as Garden Nightmares, and appears in another, L'Uomo in Casa, which offers tips on DIY and renovation projects. He also guests in sports and cookery shows, runs a business that harvests saffron and helps disabled children through pet therapy.

An ambassador for the international children's charity UNICEF, and a former volunteer for the Italian Red Cross, he was made a Knight of the Order of Merit of the Republic in January 2015.

Catania's impressive Baroque style Duomo

Travel tip:

Catania, where Andrea Lo Cicero grew up in the shadow of the still-active volcano Mount Etna, overlooking the Ionian Sea, is the second largest city in Sicily, with a population of 315,000.  It is notable for its Baroque city centre, which is a UNESCO heritage site, but also has some outstanding classical buildings, ancient remains buried over the centuries.  Greek and Roman cities built on the site of the present city disappeared under layers of lava from Etna's eruptions but parts of them have been unearthed, including an impressive Greek-Roman theatre.

Travel tip:

The Stadio Olimpico, which hosts home matches for both the Lazio and Roma football clubs as well as rugby and football internationals, is located by the banks of the River Tiber, a short distance to the north of central Rome. It was built in the 1930s as part of the Foro Mussolini (later Foro Italico), a large sports facility which Italy's dictatorial leader built to glorify the country's sporting past and celebrate its future. It became the Stadio Olimpico as the host venue for athletics events at the 1960 Olympic games.  A roof was added for the 1990 World Cup. Outside can be found Roman-style mosaics, statues of athletes and an obelisk dedicated to Mussolini.

More reading:

Sara Errani's claim to be Italy's best

Alessandro Costacurta, the champion of football longevity

Also on this day: 

1917: The birth of Sistine Chapel Choir director Domenico Bartolucci

1983: The birth of Olympic archery champion Marco Galiazzo

(Photo of Andrea Lo Cicero by Roberto Vicario CC BY-SA 3.0)
(Photo of Catania's Duomo by Urban CC BY-SA 3.0)

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Rudolph Valentino - star of silent films

Heart-throb actor who died tragically young

Rudolph Valentino in a publicity shot for his
hit movie The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The man who would become Rudolph Valentino was born on this day in 1895 in Castellaneta, a small town in a rocky region of Puglia notable for steep ravines.

Born the second youngest of four children by the French wife of an Italian veterinary surgeon, he was christened Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguolla.

When he arrived in America as an immigrant in 1913, he was registered as Rodolfo Guglielmi. His first movie credit listed him as Rudolpho di Valentina and he appeared under nine different variations of that name before achieving fame as Rudolph Valentino in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in 1920.

During the silent movie boom, he enjoyed more success in The Sheik, Blood and Sand, The Eagle and The Son of the Sheik and his smouldering good looks made him a 1920s sex symbol, nicknamed "The Latin Lover" and adored by countless female fans.

Yet his route to fame was difficult. Unable to find work at home, he joined the exodus of southern Italians to the United States and aged just 18 boarded a boat to New York, disembarking at Ellis Island on 13 December, 1913.

He soon ran out of money and, even in the harsh New York winter, he had to sleep rough in Central Park.  Eventually, after working as a dishwasher and a gardener, he found employment at Maxim's Restaurant-Cabaret as a "taxi dancer", a paid-for partner for female clients.

Maxim's attracted a wealthy clientele and it is there that Valentino began to capitalise on his good looks and natural charm to become a sought-after partner. But he had to leave after the relationship he developed with a Chilean heiress landed him in jail.

When the lady in question sought a divorce from her husband, Valentino agreed to take the stand to support her claims of infidelity on her husband's part, testifying that he was seeing a female dancer at Maxim's.  Out of revenge, the husband, a well-connected businessman, had Valentino arrested, along with a known madam, on trumped-up vice charges.

He was released after only a few days but the scandal cost him his job and when the heiress then shot her ex-husband during a custody dispute, he decided it would be in his interests to move on and he joined a travelling musical troupe that would eventually lead him to the West Coast, and Hollywood.

There he inveigled himself with more wealthy women by offering private dance tuition. At the same time, he was pursuing his ambition to work in the cinema and landed a series of bit-part roles.

It was while travelling to Florida for one of these that he read the novel The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, by the Spanish author Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, and decided to seek out June Mathis, a screenwriter for Metro Pictures, who had bought the rights to the novel, in the hope of securing a part. As it happens, Mathis had seen him perform and already had him in mind.

The movie was a massive success, one of the first to make more than $1 million at the box office, and Valentino became a star.  He was paid accordingly. At his peak he earned $10,000 a week at a time when the average wage in the United States was $2,000 a year.

Yet contentment eluded him.  At times difficult to work with, he clashed with a number of directors and a bitter dispute with one of his studios led to him being unable to work at all after they refused to release him from his contract.  Despite his earnings power, he also ran up huge debts.

Although he was married twice, albeit divorced both times, he found himself the target for gossip and innuendo about his sexuality. His taste for jewellery and exotic clothes led some male writers to imply that he was gay. One columnist enraged him so much he took boxing lessons from Jack Dempsey, the world heavyweight champion, and challenged the writer to a fight.

Crowds gather outside the Campbell Funeral Home in
New York ahead of Rudolph Valentino's funeral 

Valentino's death in 1926 at the age of only 31 shocked the world.  He collapsed at a New York hotel and was taken to hospital. At first he was thought to have appendicitis but it transpired he had perforated gastric ulcers. This in turn led him to develop peritonitis and pleuritis, conditions affecting the membranes lining his abdomen and lungs, which proved fatal.

The outpouring of grief among his fans was such that 100,000 people, mainly female, lined the streets of New York as his funeral cortege made its way to St Malachy's Roman Catholic Church in the Broadway theatre district.  A similar number were said to have filed past his coffin at the Frank Campbell Funeral Home, where his body was displayed for a number of days before the private ceremony.

Although his debts meant there was little in his estate to pay the costs, a second funeral then took place in Beverley Hills in California and Valentino's body was laid to rest in the Hollywood Memorial Park Cemetery, in a crypt provided by June Mathis, his scriptwriter friend, who had bought it for a husband she subsequently divorced.

Travel tip:

Valentino is honoured in several ways in his home town of Castellaneta.  A Rudolph Valentino Museum was opened in his childhood home and a statue unveiled in 1961. A Foundation was created to promote his life and his work and in 2009 a film school - the Centro Studi Cine Club Rodolfo Valentino Castellaneta - was opened in the town.

Rudolph Valentino's family home in Castellaneta

Travel tip:

The Valentino Museum, where the exhibits include the bed in which he slept as a boy, can be found on Via Vittorio Emanuele, in the old part of Castellaneta, which has a medieval layout of narrow alleys and streets and sits on a ridge above the sheer-sided Gravina di Castellaneta.

(Photo of Valentino family home by Pietro d'Ambrosio CC BY-SA 3.0)


More reading

Pina Menichelli: silent movie diva who achieved worldwide fame

How Shakespeare made Zeffirelli a household name

Spaghetti westerns opened doors for top producer

Also on this day:

1527: The Sack of Rome

1963: The birth of Alessandra Ferri, prima ballerina assoluta




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Mudslides in Campania

Towns and villages destroyed in natural disaster

Dramatic picture shows mud cascading down mountainside

Italy was in shock on this day in 1998 as a series of mudslides brought devastation in Campania, destroying or badly damaging more than 600 homes and killing 161 people. Almost 2,000 people were left with nowhere to live.

The mudslides were set off by several days of torrential rain and blamed on the increasingly unstable landscape caused by the deforestation and unregulated construction of roads and buildings.

Torrents of mud coursed down mountainsides in several areas between Avellino and Salerno to the east of Naples.  The town of Sarno bore the brunt of the damage but the villages of Quindici, Siano and Bracigliano were also badly hit.

The accumulation of large quantities of volcanic ash deposited by historic eruptions of the nearby Mount Vesuvius is thought to have made the mudslides particularly fast moving and the affected communities were quickly overwhelmed.

Scenes in the Sarno suburb of Episcopio was said to be reminiscent of nearby Pompeii, the city destroyed in the Vesuvius eruption of 79AD, with some streets completely buried in mud up to four metres deep.

Hospitals and schools were destroyed and volunteers joined rescue workers in digging for survivors over several days. It is believed that the bodies of some victims were never found, particularly among a significant number of illegal immigrants in the area.

Residents wade through mud in Sarno

Nearly 4,000 firefighters, troops, forest rangers and medical workers, including 80 United States marines based in Naples, helped with the rescue operation.

One factor thought to have contributed to the unstable mountainsides was the replacement of chestnut trees, which have large root systems that help hold the ground together, with hazelnut trees, which are more profitable but have much smaller root systems.

Environmentalists also pointed to the burning of trees and brush to plant commercial crops and the uncontrolled expansion of towns and villages, with parts of streams and river beds disappearing under concrete and asphalt and drainage channels often clogged with rubbish and building waste.

Many houses, apartment blocks and industrial buildings were said to be shoddily built with inadequate foundations, which meant they quickly collapsed when the mudslides hit.

The catastrophe prompted the Italian Ministry of the Environment to introduce legislative measures for environmental protection which have come to be known as Legge Sarno (Sarno Laws).

But the government was accused of responding too slowly as the disaster was unfolding, failing to issue evacuation instructions even after the Mayor of Sarno telephoned the Civil Protection Department to warn that a torrent of mud, rocks and broken trees was heading for the town.  Rescuers did not arrive until after nightfall, which meant valuable time was lost in which helicopters and other equipment could not be used.

Campania has been plagued by mudslides.  There have been almost 650 since 1918, the highest for any region in Italy.  In fact, it is the most dangerous part of Italy for natural disasters, with almost one-third of all the country's floods, landslides and earthquakes over the past 70 years taking place within its borders.

Travel tip:

Sarno is situated in an area of 500 square kilometres known as the Sarno basin, in which some 750,000 people live.  It is made up of largely industrial towns but also contains the ruins of Pompeii, some 20 kilometres to the west. Parts of the Roman city buried by the 79AD eruption of Vesuvius were unearthed in 1599 during work to alter the course of the River Sarno, although serious excavation did not begin until 1748.

Porticoes line the historic main
street in Cava de' Tirreni

Travel tip:

A diocese of the Roman Catholic church from around 1,000AD, Sarno had religious ties for many years with Cava de' Terreni, a town a few kilometres from Salerno notable for a Benedictine abbey and a beautiful porticoed main street in the commercial district of what was once the most prosperous town in the area.

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