November 8, 1914: Pro Roma Lazio 1-8
Lazio thrash Pro Roma
Lazio ran riot in the second half to turn a potentially difficult encounter into an emphatic 8-1 victory over Pro Roma.
The season so far
In 1914-15 the Italian football championship was divided into two parts: a northern championship and a central southern one.
The Northern championship was divided into six local groups. The top two teams of each group plus the best four thirds qualified for the semi-final group. The 16 teams were then divided into four groups of 4, the winners of which would then participate in the final Northern Group. The winner of this group would then meet the winner of the Central-South group for the scudetto final.
The central championship was divided into two groups, one for Tuscany and one for Rome.
The top two teams would later face each other in another group phase, the winner of which would then meet the team that won the Campania group to determine the finalist for the scudetto.
There were six teams in the Rome group: Audace, Pro Roma, Juventus Roma, Roman, Fortitudo and Lazio. In the first game the Biancocelesti had beaten Audace 3-2.
The match: Sunday, November 8, 1914, Campo della Piramide, Rome
On 8 November 1914, Lazio faced Pro Roma in the Lazio group of the Campionato Nazionale, taking on the team that had finished last in the previous season’s championship.
Despite the visitors’ recent improvement, few expected them to trouble Lazio over the course of the afternoon. Nevertheless, the scale of the final score was not inevitable, as Pro Roma competed well during the opening stages before collapsing after the break.
Pro Roma were handicapped from the start, taking the field with only ten men because of the absence of Alberto Caniggia. Lazio, meanwhile, were also temporarily short-handed, with Carlo Maranghi missing for the first ten minutes.
The opening quarter of an hour was evenly contested, with both sides exchanging attacks.
Eventually, Lazio’s forward line combined effectively, and Camillo Bona finished off a move involving some neat ground passes and a cross to put the hosts ahead.
Pro Roma responded positively and continued to threaten Gino Rossini’s goal. Their persistence paid off when a well-worked attack between the right inside-forward and the centre-forward ended with the latter beating the Lazio goalkeeper with an unstoppable shot to make it 1-1.
The equaliser briefly unsettled Lazio, but the Biancocelesti soon regained control. Giuseppe Furia and the diminutive Renato Grasselli repeatedly broke through the opposition defence, delivering the ball into the centre where Marcello Consiglio and Bona took advantage of their freedom from close marking to turn the chances into goals. Lazio struck three times in just over five minutes, transforming a close contest into a commanding lead.
Pro Roma struggled to recover after the interval. Tired and demoralised, they were forced increasingly onto the defensive as Lazio’s attack found its rhythm. The trio of Grasselli, Bona and Consiglio repeatedly carved openings through the visitors’ back line, while corners and goalmouth scrambles became a regular feature of the second half.
The pressure brought four further goals for Lazio, including a superb strike from Augusto Faccani. Pro Roma’s goalkeeper and left-back were among the few visitors to emerge with credit, but even their efforts could not prevent the scoreline from becoming increasingly one-sided.
By the final ten minutes, the contest had lost much of its intensity, with Lazio’s overwhelming advantage making the closing stages resemble a friendly rather than a competitive championship fixture.
Who played for Pro Roma
Bernardini, Nisti II, Zama, Pori, Fiorini, Mari II, Mancini, Monti, Cimino, Mignani
Who played for Lazio
Referee: Volpi
Goals: 11’ Bona, 27’ Monti, 31’ Consiglio, 33’ e 35’ Furia, 62’ Grasselli, 68’ Faccani, 72’ Furia, 75’ Bona
What happened next
Lazio came second behind Roman. These two clubs hence went on to play against Lucca and Sporting Pisa.
In the first game of the second phase Lazio had lost to Pisa 4-0 and Roman had won their game because Lucca decided not to play.
At the end of the first three games of the group, Lazio, Roman and Pisa were all on four points. The Biancocelesti then beat Sporting and Roman did the same against Lucca. The crunch match was Roman-Lazio which the Biancocelesti won 5-1. A final 2-1 victory against Lucca secured first place and now they had to wait to see who they would meet in the Campania group.
In the North, the four teams competing in this final group were Genoa, Inter, Milan and Torino. 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.
Gabriel 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 the 1896 scudetto. The Commission was created under the coordination of the deputy President of the Football Museum and Sky journalist Matteo Mariani (recently elected President of the Lega Pro League). There has been no news since.
Let’s talk about Camillo Bona
Camillo Bona was an Italian forward and one of the pioneers of Lazio, playing for the Biancocelesti during a formative period in the club’s history.
He was born in Rome on 17 November 1893 and made his first-team debut on 2 November 1913, in a friendly against Pro Roma which Lazio won 10-1.
Bona quickly established himself in the Lazio forward line.
In the 1913-14 season, he helped the club win the championship of Central and Southern Italy, earning the right to face northern champions Casale in the national final. Lazio lost both legs, but reaching the final represented a major achievement for the Roman club.
He remained an important member of the team in 1914-15, when Lazio again emerged as a leading force in the Central-Southern championship.
The Biancocelesti qualified for the national final, but the outbreak of the First World War brought the competition to an abrupt end. The title was subsequently awarded to Genoa, leaving Lazio unable to contest the decisive stage of the championship.
Bona’s contribution was evident in the league campaign of 1914-15. He scored eight goals in the season’s recorded competitions, including seven in the First Category championship. On 8 November 1914, he scored twice in Lazio’s emphatic 8-1 victory over Pro Roma, opening the scoring and adding another goal during the second-half rout.
His football career was interrupted by the war. Bona served in the Italian Army as a sergeant in the 13th Artillery Regiment.
After returning from military service, he continued to play for Lazio, although he did not regain his previous level of performance. He nevertheless helped the club win the Trofeo Alberto Canalini in 1919.
Bona left Lazio for Roman in the 1920-21 season. Across his Lazio career, from 1913 to 1920, he made 35 appearances and scored 13 goals. He died in Rome on 26 December 1962, aged 69.
Bona belonged to the generation that established Lazio as the dominant force in Roman football and brought the club close to the national title before the First World War disrupted Italian sport. His career remains part of the story of Lazio’s pioneering years.
Lazio Career
Season | Total appearances (goals) | First Category | Other |
1913-14 | 7 (4) | 7 (4) | - |
1914-15 | 14 (8) | 13 (7) | 1 (1) |
1919-20 | 14 (1) | 8 | 6 (1) |
Total | 35 (13) | 28 (11) | 7 (2) |
Sources
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