La Fiorentina… the only sweetheart Florentines would never betray!
Although the first flat races were held on the Quercione meadow in 1852 thanks to the initiative of Prince Anatole Demidoff and a group of Florentine and English friends, and the Parco delle Cascine became the privileged venue for Florentine sporting activities…
Although the first Italian national rifle range for wing shooting was opened in that area in 1859, to be followed shortly by the range for pigeon shooting …
Although the velocipede club built the first packed earth track in 1880 (in the early days of the bicycle), which in 1894 was transformed into a cement track where the Velodromo stands today…
Although the Lawn Tennis Club Firenze was established just a few hundred meters from there in 1880, merely seven years after Major Walter Clopton Wingfield had invented the game and three years after the very first Wimbledon tournament, and one of Italy’s first tennis clubs – the Circolo Tennis Firenze – was officially christened in 1898 and the first Federazione Italiana Tennis was established with Marchese Piero Antinori as its president on 8 May 1910…
Although the King and Queen were enthusiastically greeted by the crowds as they watched the regatta along the Arno organized by the Canottieri di Firenze on 13 May 1887 as reported the next day by “La Nazione”, the Florence newspaper that is celebrating its 150th anniversary this month, and the headquarters of the Canottieri Firenze right below the Uffizi boasts a fine display of embroidered banners and trophies from 1890…
Although the Florence Golf Club was established not far from the Cascine, at San Donato in Polverosa near the Villa Demidoff (‘12 minutes by tram from Piazza del Duomo’, according to an ad in “The Florence Herald” of the day) in 1889 – the club’s headquarters were in Via Tornabuoni and would later be moved to Ugolino where it still is today under that new name…
Although the Sferisterio was opened just a short distance from the Velodromo and the tennis courts in 1892 for the old Florentine game of pallone, and the sport’s great-grandchild, tamburello, is played there today…
And we could go on at length digging up the origins of many other sports that can still be enjoyed in Florence today not far from where they had their roots at end of the nineteenth century, we have to explain right away that what was the sport of princes in the city of the Medicis – that is the sport that practically cannibalizes the entire city’s interest in sports – is football, or soccer. Soccer, in a purple jersey.
Yes, soccer enjoys the passionate love of the young and old, of women and children; it’s a love for La Fiorentina, the team that was born on 26 August 1926 with an original name “AC (Associazione Calcio ) Firenze, which for some reason never took off. It is La Fiorentina– like a Florentine girl – the city’s sweetheart and the one that we never betray!
On the other hand, on 17 February 1530 Florentines were playing ball, Calcio Fiorentino, in Piazza Santa Croce while the city was besieged by enemy troops just to prove how detached and calm they were (even if they really weren’t). And period chronicles tell us that on 10 January 1490 when the Arno froze, “the city’s finest youths played ball for three days” between Ponte Vecchio and Ponte Santa Trinità.
This meant that Fiorentina could participate in the 2009-10 Champions League – the elite of European football. The team eliminated Sporting Club de Portugal (Lisbon) in the preliminary rounds, and found itself in the same group as Liverpool FC, Olympique Lyonnais, and Debrecen VSC. After the first four matches in the group, thanks also to a splendid (2-0) victory over Liverpool’s Reds, Fiorentina is in second place with 9 points just one behind Olympique Lyonnais that has already qualified. The top two teams of each group – that is the sixteen queens of European association football – qualify for first knockout round. So if Fiorentina should beat Lyons at the Franchi stadium on 24 November the team with the purple jersey will have qualified for the first knockout round of the Champions League for the first time since 1970 when it was eliminated by the Celtics of Scotland.
The stadium’s 45,000 seats will be filled to overflowing that night, the choreography of waving purple banners will be unbelievable and enthusiasm is going to reach the stars. If you can, do try to get tickets. It will be an unbelievable show within a show and the city’s streets will be deserted. And if things don’t work out the way they should, thousands and thousands of Florentines – just think that www.fiorentina.it has over 70,000 visitors each day to give you an idea of how strong this maniacal passion is – will try to board chartered planes leaving for Liverpool where Fiorentina could be playing its decisive game, defending its September 2-0 victory, at the Anfield Stadium on 9 December.
