When the news broke that Diego Maradona had died, the streets of Naples filled with mourners. Flowers, candles, shirts and banners were placed outside Napoli’s stadium as the city united in grief. The club’s decision to rename the Stadio San Paolo in his honour was a fitting tribute to a player who had elevated an entire city.
It was also the continuation of a custom in Italy. Maradona’s name joins a roll of honour that stretches as far back as calcio itself. The names of Renato Dall’Ara, Ennio Tardini and Artemio Franchi are familiar to fans of Italian football, yet many of these figures are strangers to us. Who are they and what were their stories?
The celebrated performers
Many stadiums are named after the footballing greats who graced their turf, setting new standards and delivering moments of ecstasy. That was the course followed in Milan in 1980, when Stadio San Siro was renamed in honour of Giuseppe Meazza, who had died the previous summer. As a three-time Scudetto winner and former coach, Meazza is inextricably linked to Inter’s history, but his two World Cup victories in 1934 and 1938 with Italy and his two-season spell at Milan ensure his legend transcends tribal boundaries in the city.
Silvio Piola, another icon from that golden generation of Italian football, has two stadiums named. The grounds sit 12 miles apart in rival towns: Vercelli, where he started his career, and Novara, where he finished it. Piola remains the top scorer in Serie A history with 274 goals and he secured his place in the nation’s heart when he scored two goals in the 1938 World Cup final.
The successful club officials
A lot of Italian stadiums bear the name of unsung administrators, visionary leaders or benefactors who delivered success without ever donning a shirt. Renato Dall’Ara won four league titles during his 30-year presidency at Bologna, tragically dying on the eve of another title in 1964.
On a more modest scale, president Renzo Barbera led Palermo to two Coppa Italia finals in the 1970s. And more recently, Pisa honoured their own presidentissimo, Romeo Anconetani, whose leadership allowed a club of modest means to dine at Italy’s top table during the 1980s.
Paolo Mazza coached SPAL before graduating into the boardroom and, eventually, the role of club president. During his time at the helm in the 1950s and 1960s, he was responsible for spotting the various talented players, such as Fabio Cappello, who propelled the club to Serie A. The club renamed the stadium in his honour in 1982, two months after his death.
Businessman, publisher and film producer Cino Del Duco was a colourful character born in Ascoli Piceno. After making a fortune in France, he returned to Italy and rescued his hometown football club from bankruptcy. In 1962 he persuaded the municipality to build a new stadium, which was subsequently named after him and his brother (and business partner) Lillo. That’s why Ascoli play at the Stadio Cino e Lillo Del Duca.
Leonardo Garilli presided over a period of great stability and progress at his hometown club, Piacenza. Between 1983 and 1996, he changed the coach just once, as the club climbed from Serie C2 to Serie A. Flanked by trusted lieutenants from his industrial empire, he translated his business acumen into results on the pitch.
In both Alessandria (the Stadio Giuseppe Moccagatta) and Pagani (the Stadio Marcello Torre), grounds are named after presidents of clubs who also worked as local mayors. Torre was a principled man who used his position in office to tackle the scourge of mafia infiltration in the award of public contracts. It was a calling which would ultimately cost him his life, falling victim to a Camorra assassination in 1980.
Ennio Tardini was a local politician in Parma in the early part of the 20th century who made it his business to ensure the city had adequate sporting facilities. When Tardini took on the presidency of Parma’s football club in 1921 he set about bringing an end to the club’s nomadic existence. He was pivotal in convening local entrepreneurs and politicians to raise funds and support for the construction of a bespoke stadium. Sadly, Tardini passed away before his project was completed, but it was inaugurated in his honour.
Two Tuscan stadiums take the name of footballing administrator Artemio Franchi. Having trained as a lawyer and begun his career in the chemicals industry, he moved into the world of football as Fiorentina’s sporting director. Under his reign, Fiorentina won the Scudetto in 1956 and a Cup Winners’ Cup in 1961, before he took up the presidency of the FIGC and then Uefa. After Franchi died in a car accident in 1983, the stadiums of Fiorentina (his place of birth) and Siena (his place of death) were renamed in his memory.
The local authorities in Teramo took the less conventional, but nonetheless touching approach of naming their stadium after the club doctor, Gaetano Bonolis, who had served the club for four decades.
The local sporting heroes
The municipal ownership of many sporting facilities in Italy can result in some unusual dedications to local icons who have excelled in other fields. Two stadiums of Serie C clubs are named after local motorcycling champions. In the early 20th century, the Benelli family became famous in the city of Pesaro for manufacturing motorcycles. They raced them too, and Vis Pesaro’s stadium bears the name of the youngest of six brothers, Tonino Benelli, a four-time national champion in the 1920s and 1930s.
However, Ternana’s fabulously named Stadio Libero Liberati takes some beating. Liberati was an Italian national champion at the age of 22 who went on to become a world champion in 1957. He died in 1962, aged just 35, and the new municipal stadium was named in his honour in 1969.
Several towns and cities use the provincial stadium as a way of remembering Olympic representatives from their regions. The most worthy of these is surely Alberto Braglia, after whom Modena’s ground is named. Braglia was a gymnast who won gold in London in 1908. He then overcame the premature death of his son to return to Stockholm in 1912 and win another two gold medals. After that, he retired from competition to become an acrobat in a circus.
Perhaps the most picturesque stadium in Italy lies on the southern tip of Lake Como. Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia is named after a champion rower born on those shores. The European champion was a versatile oarsman, gathering eight medals across singles, doubles, fours and eights. In 1914, he won the coveted Diamond Challenge Sculls race at Henley-upon-Thames under the gaze of King George V.
“Sina” never, however, appeared at the Olympics. The Italian selectors chose not to send a full rowing team to London in 1908 due to the difficulty and expense of transporting equipment, while in 1912 a dispute between two rowers led to the abandonment of the whole Italian rowing team. He would not live to see another Games as he lost his life serving his country in the first world war.
At the end of the second world war, many localities took the opportunity to erase Fascist-era monikers from their stadiums in favour of recognising true local heroes (though exceptions exist; Vibonese still play in a stadium dedicated to Luigi Razza, a cabinet minister in Mussolini’s government).
The prematurely departed
The death of a player in his prime inevitably evokes an acute sense of loss. Several clubs commemorate players who tragically perished during a match. Promising young Perugia midfielder Renato Curi was said to be on the verge of an Italy call-up when he suddenly and unexpectedly suffered a fatal heart attack on the field. Reflective of an era when goalkeepers were afforded little protection, Piercesare Tombolato (Cittadella) and Bruno Nespoli (Olbia) both died from injuries sustained during a match and are now honoured by their clubs.
In January 1946, Crotone were on their way to play a friendly against local side Castrovillari when their vehicle lost control on a slippery road and overturned. The accident claimed the life of their talismanic captain Ezio Scida, after whom the stadium was subsequently named.
Armando Picchi was the captain and lynchpin of the Grande Inter team. The tenacious libero won three league titles and two European Cups before beginning a career in coaching. However, cancer took his life at the age of just 36. His memory is enshrined in the name of the stadium in Livorno, his hometown club where he played and coached.
The 1949 Superga disaster claimed the lives of the most dominant team ever seen in Italian football. Fittingly, they remain the only team that are collectively remembered in a stadium name: the Stadio Olimpico Grande Torino in Turin. Several members of that historic side are also commemorated in their places of birth and by former clubs. Mario Rigamonti (Brescia and Lecco) and Romeo Menti (Vicenza and Juve Stabia) have multiple venues named in their memory, while Danilo Martelli’s memory is preserved in his home province of Mantova.
The wartime heroes
Many Italian footballers were drawn into the world wars and, sadly, many did not return. These respected figures who sacrificed their lives are remembered throughout the peninsula. Spezia player Alberto Picco had a remarkable but tragically short life. He had been a founding member of the club, was their captain, their first goalscorer, director and treasurer. His football career and work as an accountant were interrupted by the military call of the first world war. Picco was just 21 years old when he was killed in action. He was shot twice, first in the foot and then in the stomach, before declaring with his last breath: “I’m dying happy to have served my country well.”
Just two months after Picco’s death, the former Genoa captain Luigi Ferraris was killed at war. The silver gallantry medal awarded to Ferraris is buried deep beneath the north stand of the ground. It was placed there in 1933 when the stadium was renamed in his honour.
Similarly, Empoli preserve the memory of their record goalscorer Carlo Castellani, who never returned from the Mauthausen concentration camp in the second world war. He retired from playing in 1940, but continued to support the club financially using wealth from his family’s business empire. In the spring of 1944, the fascist regime began to round up agitators associated with a wave of industrial strikes. They came for Castellani’s father, a well known anti-fascist and socialist, but found him in ill health, so Castellani junior stoically took his place on the death car departing for Austria.
It is not always necessary for wartime heroes to have excelled in sport to be recognised. Venezia’s stadium is named after a celebrated pilot who was born in the city and served during the first world war. Pier Luigi Penzo was shot down over the Adriatic and subsequently captured and interned in Austria. However, this experience did little to diminish his sense of adventure. After the conflict ended, he participated in dangerous rescue missions in the Arctic. Penzo met his destiny in the skies over France in 1928 when his plane clipped power cables in poor weather. His body was recovered and returned to Venice, whereupon Italy’s second-oldest stadium was named in his honour.
Stadiums in Chiavari and Carpi memorialise the bravery of second world war partisans. Aldo Gastaldi, a strong-willed leader who was motivated by a fierce sense of justice and freedom, was a shining light of the liberation movement and his name now adorns the ground where Serie B side Virtus Entella play.
Sandro Cabassi was a courageous freedom fighter, who ran away from home aged 18 to join the liberation struggle. He was captured, tortured and placed in front of a Fascist firing squad. Staring down his destiny, his powerful words caused his would-be executioners to hesitate, forcing their commander to take a pistol and perform the deed himself. His symbolic sacrifice for the freedom of others is remembered in Carpi.
The exception
Almost every stadium in Italy is named after a man, from sporting icons and war heroes to politicians and the Pope (Stadio Giovanni Paolo II, home of Virtus Francavilla). But there is one important exception.
The stadium in Cava de’ Tirreni, home of Serie C side Cavese, is named after Simonetta Lamberti. In 1982, the 11-year-old girl was murdered in a Camorra attack. The intended target had been her father Alfonso Lamberti, a local magistrate who had been trying to bring mafia figures to justice. She was shot while returning home from the beach. Her death was symbolic of the senseless devastation caused by mafia activity, and was aptly remembered by the city’s football club.