DISCOVER EMPOLI
Playing sports (and particularly, the beloved game of football!) has its roots in Empoli’s history. From the end of the 18th century in Empoli, as in many other Tuscan cities, the game of football with an armband was played, and right here in 1920, one of the oldest professional football clubs in Italy was established. So it is no surprise that today the city boasts 5 national-level teams, and that this environment has nurtured citizens from different disciplines to become champions of the highest level.
Perhaps not everyone knows that in Empoli, the passion for football was documented in the 1700s! Let’s immediately clarify that the ancient game of football with the armband, played throughout central Italy from the 1600s to the mid-1900s, has nothing to do with the football we know today. They played in teams of three or four players with rules similar to those of tennis. The players wore a leather-covered wooden armband which was used to strike a heavy ball. Playing required a pitch measuring 80 x 16 meters, possibly flanked by a high wall against which to bounce the ball.
Such spaces are hard to find in narrow walled cities. From the 18th century onwards, with the advent of the community regulations enacted by the Lorraine government, we have reports of public disorder and damage to private property due to games of football. There was an urgent need for places to play this beloved sport which, over the 19th century, even began to attract enthusiasts from nearby cities. In Empoli, between the 1700s and 1800s, football was played in a field near the Porta Fiorentina gate; after the gate was demolished, the old Campaccio (now Piazza della Vittoria) and the area up to the new railway station were reorganised, in 1851 there was talk of building a real sphaeristerium, a stadium near the Medici bastion (today at the intersection between Via Roma and Via G. da Empoli), but this never materialised.
Times change and with them sports fashions and passions change too… In the early 1900s, the ancient ball game of “pallone” gave way to today’s football or “calcio”. Although football had been officially played in Empoli since 1909 with a dedicated section of the Ginnastica Emporium club regularly enrolled in the FIGC, it was in the summer of 1920 that the Empoli Football Club was established as the only city football team. The football matches were then played in a sports field surrounded by a wooden fence and temporary stands, located where Piazza Ristori is today, then known as the ‘Abetone’ (evergreen forest) because it was cool even in summer. In 1936, the new stadium was inaugurated in the area of today’s Via Masini. The game was played here until 1963 when the current Carlo Castellani Stadium was built, named after the third best scorer in the history of Empoli, deported and killed in the concentration camp of Gusen. Today the ‘Azzurri’ (as the Empoli F.C. players are called), after some ups and downs took them into Series C and B, were promoted again to Series A.
In this retrospective on sports in our city, we have to mention at least two other sports clubs founded in the early 20th century. The Unione Sportiva Empolese (USE) was founded in 1922 and was initially devoted to athletics. It still retains the glorious white and red jersey that became famous in the wins achieved later, starting fifty years ago, in the basketball section that today competes in the A1 series with the women’s team and B series with the men’s.
Since 1948, thanks to the drive of Amerigo Bini, the city’s sports scene gained another sports club, the Polisportiva Coop Empoli, where all kinds of sports have been coached and played over the years: from cycling to boxing, athletics, football, swimming, and figure skating.
