“In Venice you can’t do football” – Maurizio Zamparini
To take a trip to Venice is to fall in love. Nowhere else on earth matches its splendour. The water that laps against your Vaporetto (Water Taxi) as you cruise under the famous Rialto Bridge. The inevitability of getting lost in the maze that are the cities back streets or the jewel that is the Piazza San Marco.
One does not visit this city for its football, yet calcio has deep roots here. On the island of Sant’Elena lies the second oldest and perhaps most unique stadium in all of Italy. What makes the Stadio Pierluigi Penzo so special is the fact is that it is only reachable by boat or on foot, no car will get you there. Today though the Penzo looks all of its 102 years. Efforts to build a new stadium have been in the pipeline for over 20 years now but that is even less likely to happen after events of recent days.
The Stadio Penzo is home to FBC Unione Venezia or should I say was home to Unione Venezia because as of the 14th July 2015 the most romantic city in the world is without a club. The romance is dead but do people care.
This sadly is nothing new to the Venetians as the last decade has seen nothing but sorrow for the fans of the Arancioneroverdi. The club was originally founded by a group of 20 footballing enthusiasts back on the 14th December 1907 in a part of the city known as Da Nane in Corte.
At first the club wore a striking red and blue kit, but that quickly changed to the now better known green and black. The reasoning behind the change is that many associated with the club felt that the red and blue kit bore too much of a striking resemblance to the jersey of Venice’s historic rivals Genoa.
With football still in its infancy on the peninsula matches were not always readily available and as such the new club took to playing the crews from ships that would dock in the cities port. The matches against British crews said to have been particularly compelling.
By 1919 the club had restyled again changing its name to AC Venezia. Another name change would come in 1987 this time to accommodate the clubs merger with local club Mestre, incidentally this was also the time that a splash of orange was added to the clubs now well-known green and black. Two years after the merger however the club reverted back to being called Ac Venezia.
Despite being around know for over 108 years the club has only really had two periods of relative success. The first of which occurred in the 1940’s when the club held its own in the top flight of the Italian game even finishing third on one occasion.
Perhaps the clubs greatest occasion though came in 1941 when they overcame Roma to claim there one and only Coppa Italia. Two men who would prove instrumental in that success Ezio Loik and Valentino Mazzola would later go on and play for the Grande Torino side, both would also lose their lives in the Superga tragedy.
For the clubs second period of success we must skip forward to the late 80’s early 90’s. With the club staring bankruptcy in the face in 1987 in stepped one Maurizio Zamparini (Yes that Zamparini) to save the club from the abyss.
Under Zamparini’s guidance the club rose through the leagues. Come the 1997/1998 season they had finally won promotion back to the top flight after finishing second in Serie B. In their first year back in the top flight and with the magical enigma that was Alvaro Recoba on their books the club finished and impressive 11th.
A short period of yo-yoing between the two top leagues would soon follow, but with the clubs relegation in 2002 it has yet to make the return to Serie A. It was also in that year that Zamparini would walk away from the club utterly frustrated with the progress on getting a new stadium for the city.
The club would remain in Serie B until 2005 when it got caught in a match fixing scandal with Genoa. With the clubs subsequent forced relegations they soon went bust.Not long after however SSC Venezia was reborn. The new entity competed in the third and fourth tiers of the game up until 2009 when it also went bankrupt. Undeterred the Venetians rebuilt the club for the second time in four years. FBC Unione Venezia would compete in Serie D.
Promotion back to Lega Pro would occur in the summer of 2012. It was also around this time that the club came under new ownership that of Yuri Korablin. The story goes that Korablin, a Russian businessman and former mayor of Khimki, was in the city on holidays when he went into a store to buy a pair of boots. On noticing the club jersey behind the counter he quizzically enquired about it. Mesmerized by what he learned Korbablin there and then decided to buy the club.
At first Korablin came in promising big things including a return to Serie A, but this is Italy and things don’t always go according to plan. Like Zamparini before him the Russian became increasingly frustrated with the lack of movement on building a new stadium, “I’m not at all sure that this city wants this stadium despite all the positive effects it will have.”
On numerous occasions he threatened to walk away if action was not taken, yet even this failed to budge the bureaucrats. In the end Korablin finally lost patience as became ever more evident as last season went by. His presence became less and less to the point where he completely disappeared off the map and payments soon began to be missed. Venezia were dead in the water. The final blow came on the 14th of July when news came through the club had failed to pay the registration for next seasons Lega Pro, Venezia had failed for the third time in ten years.
What saddens me more than the fact that the club has gone bust again is the fact that it has garnered so little attention. We all love Italian football for its romance not just the players on the field, but the mad owners the crazy Ultras and although we complain the decrepit stadiums that are full of character. However with the demise of Venezia, “The City of Water,” and the lack of furore that entailed that romance has died just a little bit.
The post Venezia – Romance is dead appeared first on Italian Football Daily.
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