A history of Roman football 1900-1927. Part two 1912-1918
- Simon Basten
- 4 days ago
- 15 min read
In the previous part we analysed the birth of football in Rome from the beginning until 1912. It was that year that the Italian Football Federation decided to widen the championship to include clubs from most of the entire country. Prior to then the scudetto was fought for by clubs from Liguria, Piedmont and Lombardy and only recently were other teams from Emilia-Veneto allowed to participate.
All this changed in 1912 and finally even Lazio could participate for the national trophy.
There were however still some notable exceptions. Clubs from Apulia, Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia will still not be participating in the national first category division. As far as the South of Italy and Sardinia were concerned, none of the teams were affiliated with the Italian Federation because too young and too poorly organised. Sicily instead potentially did have clubs which could have joined and initially the idea was to get Sicilian teams to compete amongst each other with the winner then facing the winner of Campania. But none of the clubs entered, probably because of the costs.
Another change in the system was the introduction of relegation. The clubs ending last in the northern groups would be relegated to the second tier, called Promozione (promotion in English).
Scudetto 1912-13
The First Category Championship was divided into two main sections: a Northern one made up of the three groups of six teams with the top two meeting in a final round robin to determine the northern winner, and, for the first time, a centre-south championship. The latter was made up of two groups, Tuscany and Lazio. The winners of the two regional groups would meet in a semi-final with the other semi made up of the two Neapolitan teams. The winners would meet in the centre-south championship final.
The Rome based group (in theory it was supposed to be regional but in practice only Roman clubs participated) was made up of Lazio, Juventus Roma, Audace, Roman, Pro Roma and Alba. There was a qualifying round to eliminate one team: Alba faced Juventus Roma and Pro Roma went against Tebro Roma. Tebro was a club formed between 1910 and 1911, Tebro being the classical name of the River Tiber. Not a lot is known about this club but it is interesting to note that according to Lazio Wiki, the Lazio first team never played Tebro, only the second did, so they probably were not of a good level. The losers of these two games, Alba and Tebro, faced each other in a playoff won by Alba. They however forfeited their opening match against Roman and subsequently withdrew from the championship. Nevertheless, the federation did not expel it from the competition, but instead declared all of its remaining fixtures lost by default, each by a score of 2–0. Lazio easily came top with eight wins and two draws.
For this season Lazio were forced to play at Campo della Farnesina. The pitch, close to the Firing Range of the Farnesina was restructured in 1910 and the Biancocelesti started playing there. They had been “evicted” from Villa Borghese. One morning in 1913, during a match between Lazio and Audace, a ball kicked by Fernando Saraceni struck a noblewoman full in the face as she was riding past in her carriage. The woman was Clementina Utili, the wife of the Prefect of Rome, Angelo Annaratone. As punishment for the incident, the Prefect ordered the Biancocelesti to vacate their playing ground.
Other grounds where they played, apart from the Campo Due Pini, was the Stadio Nazionale and the Campo di Porta San Paolo. The former was built in 1910 and inaugurated on June 10, 1911. Its purpose initially was for athletics and only rarely was it used for football. However, when there were high profile games, Roman, Alba and Pro Roma played there. Campo di Porta San Paolo (occasionally also called Campo della Piramide) was behind the Pyramid of Cestius and it was where Pro Roma usually played.
Elsewhere, in the Northern Division the Piedmont group was won by Pro Vercelli, who won every single game except one, with Casale in Second place. Not much of a contest in Ligurian-Lombardy group with Milan winning every game except the last one against the Rossoblu and Genoa losing only two. Vicenza and Hellas won the Veneto-Emilia grouping. Juventus, Racing Libertas and Modena were relegated.
In the rest of the Central-Southern division, Virtus Juventusque won the Tuscany group and for the Campania playoff, Naples beat Internazionale Napoli 5-3 on aggregate.
We have still to speak about some of these clubs. ASD Casale came from Casale Monferrato in Piedmont and was founded in 1909. They played in black shirts. Vicenza Calcio was born in 1902 and changed name six years later to Associazione del Calcio in Vicenza. They played in stripped red and white shirts and still do today. Associazione Calcio Hellas was formed in 1903 in Verona and wore blue and yellow jerseys which are the colours of the city. Virtus Juventusque was a multi-sport club, like Lazio, born in Livorno in 1905 wearing white and blue shirts. Internazionale Napoli was founded in 1911 and wore dark blue whereas Naples Football Club saw the light in 1905 as Naples Cricket & Foot-Ball Club but a year later the Cricket was taken off. They played in white and light blue. The two clubs would merge for financial reasons in 1922 and call themselves FBC Internaples. In 1926 the name was changed to Associazione Calcio Napoli.
The final grouping of the Northern Division saw Pro Vercelli prevail over Genoa, whereas in the Central South Lazio first beat Virtus Juventusque 6-1 on aggregate and then Naples 3-2 on aggregate.
The national final for the scudetto was therefore between Pro Vercelli and Lazio and it was played in Genoa. Pro Vercelli demonstrated their superiority by thrashing Lazio 6-0 and winning the scudetto for the fifth time. No contest, the Piedmont team was far superior to the Biancocelesti. But it was however a great achievement for Lazio, showing that in the central south, they were by far the strongest team.
Lazio’s prestige was further shown when they were invited to a friendly against Inter to inaugurate their new pitch in Via Goldoni. The Biancocelesti lost 3-1, but they were much applauded, as they left the field, by the spectators as they really impressed.
Scudetto 1913-14
In 1913 the Federation met to decide how to structure the campionato. Theoretically the previous year Juventus, Racing Libertas and Modena should have played in the Promozione league but the latter two refused to go down. For Juventus it was more complicated since there was no reason to not allow Alessandria, who had won the Piedmont Promozione group the previous season, to join the first tier.
A solution had to be found and it was. The clubs in the Northern groups were increased to ten, Lombardy stood on its own but had Juventus and Novara joining, Liguria and Piedmont were grouped together. In the southern league the Tuscany group reached eight teams whereas the Lazio one still had six. Still no participation from the rest of Italy.
In sum, the formula was: Northern Group: Piedmont-Liguria, 10 teams, top two qualified for semi-final group; the same for Lombardy whereas Veneto-Emilia had 9 teams but still the top two qualified for semi-final group which was a round robin with home and away matches. Teams arriving last were relegated. Centre-South Group: Tuscany 8 teams, Lazio, 6 teams with the top two facing each other in a semi-final. The winner would then meet the Campania finalist (2 teams).
Results were interesting. Casale and Genoa came top in Piedmont-Liguria with just one point more than national champions Pro Vercelli. Inter and Juventus were top in the Lombardy group, Vicenza and Hellas in the Emilia-Veneto group. The clubs relegated were Liguria, AC Milanese and Udine (later re-admitted since Volontari Venezia quit their activity).
In the Rome-based group no contest. Lazio won every single one of their games, including a couple of 9-0s.
The teams played on the usual grounds with one exception: Campo dell’Olmo. It was an area slightly west of where the Stadio Olimpico is now and where US Romana would later play.
They faced SPES Livorno (founded in 1906) in the Southern League semi-final. After winning the first leg away 3-0 they won even the second one (1-0) and in the Central-Southern Division final they played against Internazionale Napoli. They only won the first leg 1-0, but in the return match they took them to the cleaners with an 8-0.
In the final Lazio faced Casale, who had won the Northern semi-final group with a two-point lead over Genoa.
It was clear to everybody that Casale was way stronger than Lazio and this is exactly what happened in the final. The Piedmontese crushed the Biancocelesti 7-1 in the first leg and won also in Rome 2-0.
Still a prestigious achievement for the Biancocelesti but from a football point of view these clubs were still miles away from the rich northern ones and would be for quite some time.
Scudetto 1914-15
Once again, the Italian Federation had to face the refusal to relegate from the clubs that had come last the previous season in the northern groups. So, yet another compromise was found. In the Northern Division there would be six groups made up of 6 teams each: Group A Liguria-Piedmont (top three qualified for the semi-final groups), Group B Piedmont (top three qualified); Group C Piedmont-Lombardy (top three qualified); Group D Lombardy-Emilia (top two qualified); Group E Lombardy-Emilia (top two qualified); Group F Veneto (top three qualified).
For the semi-finals there would be four groups of four with the winners going into the final group. The club that came first then qualified for the national final.
In the Central-Southern League the formula was the same as the past. At least initially. But during the course of the season the federation decided to allow the top two teams from the Tuscany and Lazio groups to qualify for a semi-final round robin, the winner of which would face the Campania winner to determine who would qualify for the national final.
An important thing to note is that the clubs were heavily penalised for the obligatory conscription between September and October 1914 of those born in 1894 and in the Spring of 1915 for those born in the first semester of 1895.
The teams that qualified for the Northern semi-final group were the following: Genoa, Alessandria and Andrea Doria in Group A, Torino, Juventus and Vigor Torino (a club founded in 1908 which wore light blue and white) in Group B, Pro Vercelli, Casale and Novara in Group C, Milan and Juventus Italia (from Milan, founded in 1910 wearing green and red) in Group D, Inter and Como (founded in 1907 initially wearing a blue and white striped shirt), Vicenza, Hellas and Venezia in Group E.
After the semi-final groups, Genoa, Milan, Inter and Torino where to battle it out for the Northen League title.
Sporting Pisa (founded in 1909 and wore a stripped black and blue jersey) and Lucca (founded in 1905 and wore a black and red jersey) qualified for the Tuscany group.
In the Lazio group for the first time Lazio was overtaken by Roman. The Biancocelesti, despite uncharacteristically losing a couple of games, in the second half of the features managed to maintain a three-point lead over third placed Audace with two games to go and qualified for the semi-final group by beating Fortitudo 7-0.
The semi-final group saw Lazio lose their first game and at the end of the first three games Lazio, Sporting Pisa and Roman were tied on 6 points. Then Lazio beat Pisa and Roman to lead the group. The final matches did not take place as Roman and Lucca pulled out so Pisa and Lazio were awarded 2-0 wins. As a consequence, Lazio would have to meet the Neapolitan winner for the Southern final.
In the Northern semi-final group with one game to go Genoa had 7 points, Torino and Inter 5, Milan 3. The last two games should have been Genoa vs Torino and Milan vs Inter. Everything could still have happened.
But then World War I broke out and the Championship was stopped.
The title was initially not assigned, but in 1919 the Italian Federation gave the scudetto to Genoa and this apparently was ratified in 1921. But there are serious doubts over this attribution.
The Lazio Petition
In 2015 Gian Luca Mignogna, solicitor, and the Centro Studi Nove Gennaio Millenovecento, the Lazio research and documentation centre, launched an online petition to award the 1914-15 scudetto jointly to Lazio and Genoa and, thanks to the overwhelming support, asked the Italian Federation to give the title to Lazio.
Mignogna and the centre proved that Lazio were the finalists. Only two Neapolitan teams had signed up for the Championship and the two games had been annulled due to irregularities in the signing of players. The repeat games saw Internazionale Napoli beat Naples 3-0 in the first leg. But the second apparently never officially took place due to the suspension following the outbreak of the war and was demoted to a regional game. So, there is doubt whether there would have ever been a Campania champion.
Furthermore, also proven was that Genoa self-proclaimed themselves champions and that the actual scudetto was not assigned.
Genoa obviously dispute all of this. Since Genoa only needed a point in the last game to reach the final, and since the Northern teams always outclassed the central championship finalists, in their opinion it was only right to award the scudetto to the Rossoblu.
De facto though, the only real finalists were Lazio.
The response of the Italian Federation
The President of the Italian Football Federation in 2016 called upon a special Commission to determine what would be the best way forward. This Commission advised to give the scudetto to the two teams. The Federation should then have ratified the decision but they did not.
Gabriele Gravina was elected President in 2018 and a year later he asked for the creation of another commission to examine this request plus the Genoa claim to the 1924-25 title and Torino’s for the 1926-27. Apparently also Udinese have claims on an 1896 scudetto. The Commission was created under the coordination of the deputy President of the Football Museum and Sky journalist Matteo Mariani (recently re-elected President of Serie C). There has been no news since.
Gravina and Lotito had a terrible relationship and there was no way the President of the Italian Federation would ever give a scudetto to Lazio. Gravina stepped down on April 2, 2026, following the missed qualification for the World Cup for the third time and Giovanni Malagò, former President of the Italian Olympic Committee was elected. Malagò is a strong Roma fan so no way would he ever give Lazio a third scudetto. We will have to wait some more years.
First World War
The beginning of the Great War practically put an end to all national sporting activity. There were still local competitions however. Lazio did register for the Roman First Category League for the 1915-16 season but then pulled out probably due to the fact that half the team had been called up to fight in World War I. Instead, they played the Second Category Championship and despite a decimated squad managed to win it. They played against the second teams of Juventus Roma, Audace, Pro Roma and Fortitudo as well as Flaminia, Tiberis and Laziale. The former was a young club likely composed largely of boys below military age. Società Ginnastica Sportiva Tiberis was founded in 1908. They did not have a football section yet (that came in 1919) but they probably were already playing football at the time. Società Sportiva Laziale had nothing to do with Lazio, they were a minor team, probably originally a Catholic youth club. These three teams were admitted due to the lack of available clubs in the war period.
A new ground is mentioned: Campo Flaminio or Campo Lungotevere Flaminio. It was directly opposite the current Stadio Olimpico but on the other side of the Tiber along its banks.
Lazio went back to playing the First Category for the 1916-17 season. The Roman League saw the participation of Lazio, Pro Roma, Tiberis, Fortitudo and Juventus Roma. The Biancocelesti came fourth, Fortitudo won.
From what is known, Lazio did not take part in the 1917–18 Roman Championship because its players were serving at the front during the war. This championship was not official, but it featured a number of matches played by teams that were largely incomplete and made up of youth players.
The participating teams were Juventus Roma, Pro Roma, U.S. Romana (which later withdrew), and Fortitudo.
Unione Sportiva Romana was founded in 1916 with the contribution of Società Ginnastica Roma who merged with Unione Calcio Romana which had seen the light in 1910. The wore a green and white vertically striped shirt
Lazio then participated in the Roman Third Category Championship, which was won by US Romana ahead of Juventus Roma. In this competition, Lazio finished in third place, ahead of Pro Roma and two other teams that are not clearly identified in the only surviving contemporary article on the subject published in La Gazzetta dello Sport. It is possible that one of these teams was Fortitudo, while the other may have been either Esquilia or Tiberis.
Esquilia was an old Roman club where Fulvio Bernardini first played football.
Hence, Lazio played ten games but results, when and against who is unknown.
Few games were played in 1918-19. 10 clubs participated in the Roman First Category League divided into two groups: Lazio, US Romana e Juventus Roma in one, Audace Roma, Fortitudo e Pro Roma in the other. Lazio came second in their group and missed out on the final. The competition was won by Juventus Roma who beat Fortitudo on goal difference between the two final ties.
Elsewhere in Italy
During the war there were some regional completions just like in Rome where the clubs played with the few players left plus the inclusion of players from the youth teams that were too young to go to the front.
In 1915-16 there was the Coppa Federale with the same protagonists of the Norther Division with the exception of the Veneto clubs judged to be too near the battle front and the rest of Italy for logistic reasons. It was won by Milan.
In 1916-17 a number of competitions with the name of the region were organised. Modena won the Coppa Emilia, Milan the Coppa Lombardia, Genoa the Coppa Liguria, Torino the Coppa Piemonte and Pisa the Coppa Toscana.
In 1917-18 there was the Coppa Mauro in Lombardy won by Milan but a year later it was Legnano to win the cup.
The price of World War I
The first world war changed the face of Italian football. More than 200 players died during the conflict.
In Rome Lazio was the hardest hit with 12 deaths: Giorgio Bompiani (midfielder, player of the second team), Ernesto Bonaga (goalkeeper and forward, one appearance with the first eleven), Alberto Canalini (pioneer, the man who first built goal posts to be placed in Piazza d’Armi), Manilo Cianconi (forward from the third team), Renato De Censi (defender, 8 appearances and 2 goals), Orazio Gaggiotti (forward from the third team), Lorenzo Gasilini (goalkeeper, 22 appearances), Enrico Laviosa (forward, one appearances), Fulvio Massini, Andrea Teodoro Molina (from the youth teams), Camillo Monetti (defender, 17 appearances), Luigi Riccardi (forward, 1 appearance and 1 goal).
Furthermore, others were wounded in battle such as Camilo Bona, Leonardo and Vincenzo Di Napoli as well as Guido and Mario Levi.
In total there were 30 Lazio members from the various sports who died, the youngest had just turned 20, the oldest was 72.
Inter perhaps paid the highest price of all. The club lost Giuseppe Caimi, captain Virgilio Fossati, Luigi Boffi, Ugo Joima and Giulio Bavastro. Even Osiride Brunelli, the team's devoted masseur, never returned from the front. The Nerazzurri also mourned the deaths of Enrico Castiglioni, Mario Corino and Senio Protti, while others, including Franco Bontadini and Giovanni Bettinzoli, distinguished themselves for their bravery in battle.
Milan suffered the loss of several prominent figures. Vice-president Gilberto Porro Lambertenghi was killed in aerial combat, followed by a long list of players: Glauco Nulli, Mario Azzolini, Erminio Brevedan, Alessandro Calderari and Arnaldo Carito. Edoardo Colombo, Ugo Gardella and Lorenzo Gaslini never lived to see the end of the war, nor did Domenico Moda, Egidio Rovelli and Giuseppe Soldera. Paolo Wilmant, Gino Oliva and Anselmo Moretti completed the Rossoneri's tragic roll of honour.
Juventus endured its greatest loss with the death of its first president, Enrico Canfari, who fell heroically while leading his battalion on Monte San Michele. The Bianconeri also lost Benigno Dalmazzo, midfielder Luigi Forlano and Alpini officer Nicolò Canepa, who was killed on the Asiago Plateau in July 1916.
Genoa paid a particularly heavy price. Genoa Cricket and Football Club mourned Luigi Ferraris, a Florence-born officer who was posthumously awarded the Silver Medal for Military Valour. Andrea Doria lost Italy international Carlo Galletti and club captain Cesare De Marchi, together with forward Armando Fava, goalkeeper Adolfo Gnecco and Michele Nizza. The city also lost James Richardson Spensley, a medical officer in the British Army and one of the pioneers of Italian football.
Some of the Italian stadiums have been names after the fallen soldiers: Luigi Ferraris in Genoa, Giovanni Zini in Cremona and Silvio Appiani in Padua.
A new start
World War I finished on November 4, 1918, for Italy but it was too late to be able to organise a competition for that season so the first First Category Tournament since the conflict was planned for 1919-20.
But the war had also changed the football world. A great many players had lost their lives, but football had become a necessary and psychological need for forgetting the horrors of the war. In the trenches, to escape boredom, and wherever possible, football matches were organised both among regiments as well among the allies. The Brits and Italians played a number of games against each other and there was even an international tournament organised with the French on the Asiago Plateau.
When the federation met to decide how to set up the competition, they were faced with numerous requests to participate from the Regional Committees. The plan, which should have been implemented 1915-16 but was abandoned for obvious reasons, to divide the national leagues into two, A and B, had to be scrapped.
There were now 76 clubs participating: 48 for the North, 18 for Centre-South plus 10 in the qualifications. Preliminary rounds for Emilia (2 rounds, 2 matches), Liguria (2 rounds, 3 matches), Lombardy (one round 3 matches), Piedmont (one round, one match) and Campania (semi-final, final).
After that for the Northern Division there were going to be six groups: Emilia (one group, top two through to semi-final), Liguria (one group, top two through to semi-final), Lombardy (three groups top two through to semi-final), Piedmont (two groups, top three to semi-final), Veneto (one group, top two through to semi-final).
What followed was a semi-final round robin with three groups of six, with the top three to the final round robin where the winner would play for the national final.
In the Southern Division, there were the usual Lazio and Tuscany groups but for the first time there was one for Campania. Tuscany and Campania had both a six-team group but Lazio had increased to seven: Pro Roma, Fortitudo, Roman, Audace, Lazio plus two news teams: US Romana, previously mentioned, and Juventus Audax which had been formed after the merger of Juventus Roma with Audace Esperia.
The top two of each group would then be divided into two groups of three with the winners meeting for the Southern Division final to determine who would meet the Northern champion.
In our next part we will be describing what happened in Roman football up until 1925-26 when the Italian Federation moved away from the regional organisation to a more non geographical based one.
Sources
Various pages on Lazio Wiki, Wikipedia and Lazio Stories
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