Most fans will tell you that Italian football was born in 1898. This is when the first official games were played. If we dig a little deeper, we learn that soccer appeared in Italy more than a decade before that. Thanks to Edoardo Bosio, the game of soccer can be traced back to 1887.
Bosio was an Italian merchant who worked for a British textile business. This fortuitous position allowed him to live in England and eventually introduce him to the game of soccer. In 1887, he found himself back in his home town of Turin, Italy where the fascination of British football took root with the local British population. He formed a soccer group of British and Italian men who practiced in the winter.
Within two years, a second football group was formed. It was created and populated by many of the city’s nobles, and thus it was called “Team of Nobles”. In another two years, this pair of teams joined together, creating the International Football Club of Turin. This new group was composed of both nobles and farm workers.
By 1894, Football Club Torinese was created. Other soccer teams were formed in the region, such as the Internazionale Football C1, which was merged with Football Club Torinese by 1900. These early matches were first played in Piazza d’Armi, Valentino and eventually in the Old Stadium. During these years, soccer wasn’t just played in Turin, but in the port city of Genova, as well. As a matter of fact, there was a large British population of merchants and sailors who were organizing matches. In early 1899, Italy’s first official soccer team was created, the Genoa Cricket and Football Club.
In these early years, most Italian soccer teams either played in independent games or in the Italian Federation of Gymnastics (FNGI). The FNGI organized the annual championships, often in conjunction with a number of other sports, much like the Olympic Games. By 1904, the first Italian Football Championship was organized in Firenze.
Throughout the history of Italian soccer, there are three big events that stand out and help define the sport. The earliest of these was in 1927. Due to an irregularity in their match against Juventus, Torino’s championship title was stripped. Because of this, Juventus was awarded the championship.
The second event was not a scandal, but was instead a tragedy. On May 4, 1949, while returning from a match in Lisbon, the plane carrying the Torino A.C. football team crashed into a hill, killing everyone aboard. The entire team, with the exception of one player, who missed the trip, was killed that day. At the time of the crash, Torino A.C. was leading Serie A, with only four games left. In order to complete the season, the club fielded their youth team. In a generous show of sportsmanship and respect, their remaining opponents also fielded their youth teams.
The third defining event of Italian football, involved yet another Torino-based scandal. The year was 2006 and the disgrace involved Juventus. In May, 2006, it was discovered that Juventus and four other teams were accused of lining up referees to help rig games. Various punishments were given out, with Juventus receiving the harshest of them.
Don’t allow these two scandals to taint your view of Italian soccer. With well over 100 years of playing, the list of accolades far outshines these minor hiccups. Italian teams have racked up a truly impressive list of trophies and championships at all levels of competition. Italian football is synonymous with highly-tactical game play with a strong emphasis on defense. This sometimes translates into very low scoring games, but Italian fans have long ago come to love their soccer for these very reasons.
