Time.news – As in any self-respecting civil war, there was a split between Federated and Confederate. Italian Football Federation against Italian Football Confederation. Rich against poor and fat people against small people or, if you like it more, rational lovers of the most beautiful game in the world against small selfish people driven by provincial or shop interests. Each, once the documents have been read, decide on their own. And see if this story doesn’t tremendously reminiscent of current events though it all happened exactly one hundred years ago, in the long hot summer of 1921.
To tell the times: the machinery of the factories still boiled with the red-hot passion of the Red Biennium; D’Annunzio has just left Fiume; the newborn Communist Party is well advanced in weaning and the fascist squads are running around the Bassa.
All we needed was the ball.
The problem is obvious, despite its complexity. An excess of members in the championship, which consequently had been divided into a saraband of minor tournaments: all with the same dignity but none worthy of being played, if not to go and play the final. And then the very final itself: the last one before the separation sees the Pisa succumb with the Pro Vercelli for 2-1 between fractured shins and accusations to the referee of helping the Piedmontese. Pisa will never have a chance like this again; on the other hand, the chaos has already broken out and is in full swing.
In fact, the evening before the meeting (23 July: such a long championship could only end in the middle of summer) the FIGC general assembly met in Turin at the Chamber of Commerce. On the agenda the budgets and, as if nothing had happened, in the various and eventual the presentation of the reform of the championship, entrusted a year earlier to Vittorio Pozzo.
Pozzo, who would go down in history for the double world success of the following decade, was someone who knew how to stay in the world because the world had turned it.
He knew very well why he had been entrusted with the reform commission: to bury the problem of the reform itself with the method of calling the experts to consult. So he had dodged the obstacle, which would also have meant the end of his personal career, summoning the wise men, then indulging their reluctance, finally eliminating them one by one and only reaching the finish line.
The project brought into discussion in Turin was entirely his own flour. He would remember years later: “I wrote knowing what would happen, and I do not hide the fact that a hint of ironic pleasure made me imagine the ruckus that would have been unleashed around my proposals, at the time of the assembly “.
He had been right.
Juventus and Milan, still them
The “Progetto Pozzo” is presented with its single-group championship, its relegations to Serie B and its promotions from the cadet series, with its calendar that cannot be changed during construction, especially with its reduction of the admitted teams. Those represented in the room, to understand, are about 200. They would have dropped, more or less, by three quarters of the total.
The melee lasts two days in the area: chairs thrown, insults spat in the face, accusations and betrayals. Final vote of a lapidary motion: “The Assembly rejects the Pozzo Project“. Approved! Put it in the minutes: 65 are with the reform, 113 against. But it doesn’t end there, also because the football establishment is all on the losing side.
The Aventine that year did not do the socialists or even the popular ones, but a group of companies captained – pay attention because the temptation of deja vu at this point becomes strong – from Juventus, Milan, Pro Vercelli and Genoa. The Italian Football Confederation was born. Too difficult to refrain from writing: a Super League, opposed to the Federation. From this moment on, also for clarity of exposition, we will call them Federated and Confederate respectively, otherwise confusion is inevitable.
First federated act: recognizing the validity of the championship won by Pro Vercelli. Pisa resigned, also because you got involved with the enemies. First Confederate Act: Organizing un championship all its own, divided into 30 teams from all regions, especially in the South. Needless to say, the federates, on the other hand, were northerners: they did not descend further down than Tuscany.
The competitions start, in mutual and deaf hostility. And this is where the heads start to cool and the brains to work. When the national team, a few weeks later, has to confront Switzerland, the problem of the summons arises. You choose to leave the Confederate players at home: you will do with what is there. But it is clear, even if a very decent 1-1 is remedied with the most popular Swiss, that the company will not be replicable indefinitely. Caporetto is around the corner: soon there will be a big match with Austria, the superpower of the time.
Victory of the Hawks
Someone then begins to think about mediation, and a mediator. Emilio Colombo, who has a very Christian Democrat name, is summoned while he is the director of the Gazzetta dello Sport. Faithful to the mandate, and perhaps even to the name, he proposes an agreement. Not at all, rejected: the hawks and the diehards win.
Not entirely, however, because in the meantime the crafty man manages to get the confederates back into the national team. So with Austria it ends well: 3-3, and even at the beginning of the second half it was 3-1 for our team. And since the Europeans do not yet exist, but the European challenges are deeply felt, the formula also works with Czechoslovakia, which was also a finalist in the Antwerp Olympics.
Another draw, yes, and with a mutilated victory (1-0 with four minutes to go). In the meantime, however we are back in the ranks of the great ones.
When their championship ends, the Confederasts celebrate: once again Pro Vercelli wins, which however seems to be captained by Pirro. After having drained the champagne, they look around and realize everyone – managers, clubs, Football Confederation – that they have won in the desert. Fifa does not recognize them, nobody wants them. So you are not going anywhere.
Among the Federati, the championship is from Novese, but no one is under any illusions: the tournament is worth very little, without the big players. Novese herself won, yes, but in the meantime her best men weren’t there because they were involved in a meeting of the national team in view of the meeting with Belgium.
Best demonstration of weakness, in front of the football institutions, it cannot be given. A reason, or a wrong, divided by two gives only two weaknesses. It is urgent to rethink.
In the end he checks it out
He still thinks about it, Emilio Colombo. Three groups for 36 teams in total in the First Division (then reduced to 24 in a single group), reintegration of the splinters without sanctions, Second Division at national level, then the Third and Fourth regional and interregional. Basically, very similar to what happens today.
As for the championship victory, just look at the Serie A roll of honor to understand. The 1921-22 season is assigned to Pro Vercelli. But also in the Novese. Emilio Colombo had succeeded in the miracle: there was still no fascism that Italy was already Christian Democrat.
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