Calcio Storico: A Florentine Football Game Review

Tanmoy's review

What do you get when you cross soccer, rugby and Renaissance costumes?

From Day 10: Rome to Florence (Birth place of the Renaissance) in Florence, Italy on Jun 17 '06

Steeped in almost 500 years of tradition and described loosely as a mix between football and rugby - with a good dose of bare-knuckle boxing added to the mix - Calcio Storico is not a game for those who flinch at the site of blood.

Calcio Storico (Historic Soccer) is Florence’s answer to the more famous Palio horse race of Siena. Both have similar qualities: historically accurate Renaissance costumes, a pre-game parade of the different teams, neighborhood people going head-to-head for the right to hold the winner’s title and aggressive competition leading to inevitable brawling.

Although the Calcio Storico of today is based on a memorable game held in 1530, the sport actually may have begun as far back as the 1400s. The original games continued until 1739 in Piazza Santa Croce. After a couple centuries of Calcio Storico hiatus, the Fiorentini brought the sport back as an annual event in 1930.

There are four neighborhoods of Florence, each known by the major church in the area, and each represented by a team for the historical football game: Santa Croce has the Azzurri, the Blues, San Giovanni supports the Verdi, the Greens, Santo Spirito has the Bianchi, the Whites and Santa Maria Novella sponsors the Rossi, the Reds. Each June, on the two Sundays before the Festa di San Giovanni there are two play-off games to decide the finalists.

I was told that the players are volunteers in their twenties or thirties and that about ten years ago a new rule mandated that no one with a criminal record could play for a Calcio Storico team.

The sport is a cross between Greco-Roman wrestling, rugby and soccer. Goals are scored by pitching the round red and white leather ball over a four-foot high wooden wall that runs the full width at each end of the field. Quixotically, a tall narrow white tent with red trim and a small red flag on top is positioned in the center of each goal wall. In front, stands the captain of a team and a standard bearer with the team flag. When a team scores, the cannon is fired, the scoring team's standard-bearer runs the length of the field waving his flag with his team running behind, cheering. The other team's standard bearer slinks down the field and the teams change goals.

The ball is not moved on the ground -- it must be too hard to kick the heavy ball through the sand -- but instead, the players run with it or pass it. While half the team is moving the ball, the other half wrestles one-on-one with opposing players in some sort of defensive scheme. Sometimes when a player had been pinned for a long time one of his teammates will come along and take his place, wrestling the opposing player off the poor soul whose face is being ground into the sand. Almost all of the combatants have their shirts torn in two and ripped off their backs by the end of the game. The defensive wrestlers spill the most blood.

Six referees, wearing soft velvet caps adorned with ostrich plumes and jewel-toned velvet doublets and puffy knee-length pants, observe different parts of the game; some watch the ball being moved, others watch the wrestling; they do not intercede often. A referee judge carries a sword, but I never figure out how it was used in his deliberations. He swept off his plumed hat to signal changes of side and to award goals.

There are two teams each made up of 27 combatants. The playing field is a giant sand pit with a goal running the width of each end. There is a main referee, six linesmen and a field master who intervenes in the very likely event of fisticuffs . I might add that the “field” is really Piazza Santa Croce transformed into a mess of sand, bleachers and net, a true shame if you’re there to gaze at the facade of one of the most important churches of the Renaissance. Once the game begins, players grapple against each other to make not goals, but caccie. And, there’s a trick, if you make a bad attempt, it’s a half a caccia for your opponents! In the spirit of the 1500s, many players see the game as a golden opportunity to pound the guy that tried to steal their girlfriend .

At the end of the 50 minute championship game, the team with the most caccie wins the grand prize… a live cow. Historically the cow was butchered for a veal feast, but now it’s just a symbol.

There was a lot of kissing after the game, before the awarding of the heifer to the winning team and the final parade of dignitaries. First, the triumphant players kissed each other. Then, the victorious were kissed by hordes of girls wearing spandex pants, and shoes with stiletto heels. Finally, these sweaty, bloodied warriors were kissed by their mothers. In Italy, even the most ferocious of men is a mamma's boy.

Each year starts off with a parade of 530 Renaissance costume-clad Florentines marching throughout the historical center of Florence. Even if you think you may skip the soccer game, this parade is something you don’t want to miss. The participants are historically accurate in their colorful 16th century costumes, armor, banners and music.

There is a official website for this ancient football game http://www.globeit.it/caf/ and you can browse fee interesting photos over here http://www.tuscanywonderland.net/site/calcio-storico/

The game itself is said to originate from an ancient Roman ball sport, which became a Florentine specialty in the golden age of the Tuscan capital.

On February 17, 1530, the residents of Florence produced a similar extravaganza in Piazza Santa Croce in full view of the armies of Spain and Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, which had been laying siege to the Tuscan city for over five months. Following the pageantry, with the extreme irony that only Florentines possess, although hungry and exhausted, they thumbed their collective nose at the invaders by staging a game of football, calcio in livrea or football in livery. In modern times, that famous game is replayed every year on June 24, the feast day of Florence's patron saint, San Giovanni, John the Baptist.

It is now the grandest event and display of historical and cultural tradition in the Florentine calendar, rivaling the Palio of Siena -- the yearly horse race -- in pomp and rich pageantry. Like the Palio, the Calcio Storico is not only a reflection of the past, but also is a bloody, violent competition between rival neighborhoods of the city.

So amidst a colorful display of period costume, blood and team colored smoke bombs the battle unfolds in front of thousands of cheering locals and tourists in Florence for the spectacle. ...

We were in Florence 17th of June , missed the actual match just by a week .