We went to Acerra to find out what links the local team to Grande Torino.
In Naples, we know, practically everyone supports Naples. Not even in Naples, however, does it exist solo Naples. Not in the province. at least. In the shadow of Vesuvius, the passion for football spreads like wildfire, permeating the social fabric of many small realities far from the spotlight of first-class football and embodying sporting values such as aggregation, the link with the territory and with the younger generations. The Giugliano Football for example, after tumultuous years on and off the pitch, it has found new life with a passionate and loyal family like the Mazzamauros at the helm and this year they will officially compete in the playoffs for promotion to Serie B. However, it has already conquered the cadettry since weeks there Juventus Stabia thanks to a surprising winning run that displaced the two battleships from Campania Benevento ed Avellinoil Sorrento he managed to maintain the category, obtaining a quiet salvation. In D, however, the islanders of Ischia are chasing the dream of achieving promotion to Lega Pro, already achieved by Cavese. Even further down, in the depths of amateur football, the joy of a large community like that ofAcerranafinally celebrating his return to semi-professionalism.
A bond, that between Acerra and football, born in 1926 but consolidated in December ’47: the friendship between the Acerra top-flight referee Francesco Mondella and the president Ferruccio Novi makes afriendly match between the hosts and Grande Torino. Intrigued by this unusual event, I decided not to limit myself to accessing the material kept in the Rai archives in Naples or finding generic information from the web, but to go there in person.
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I go to Acerra on a Monday before lunch, after having risked getting lost several times in the vast countryside of Nola, where every junction is the same as the one after it and identical to the one before. To welcome me, garnet colored festoons along the entire tree-lined avenue that accompanies travelers from the exit of the state road to the city center. As a first stop I choose the Arcoleo, which they call here field of ball and I do not underline the great discontent felt towards the local administrators.
(Photo: Massimiliano Iollo)
It is in the parking lot of the sports facility that chance will introduce me Emanuele, a young off-duty member of the Municipal Police who will surprisingly act as my guide throughout the day. He is the one who vouches for the stadium custodian as to the validity of my intent. He will make me open the doors of the locker room, the stands, he will make me enter the pitch to test the waters and take some photographs.
He will also tell me that the highlight is not the new system, as I mistakenly believed. The Arcoleo, in fact, is only the new home of Acerrana. The municipal stadium, where the heroes five times crowned champions of Italy took the field, is located in a completely different place, in the heart of the city. We then jump in the car and split the town in two, among numerous references to Pulcinella who was born here in Acerra and the famous monument celebrating the eighty-eight victims of the Nazi massacre which occurred in October 1943.
We arrive in the old Municipal Stadium, today a very modern public park equipped with a stage for events, a boundless garden with children’s rides and sports equipment for outdoor training. Only one wing remains of the old giant. On those steps, where groups of children stand today, there were once many curious people who wanted to come and watch the performance of the legendary team. An event that represented a real rebirth for the community, tormented by the infamy of the war also touched by the Granata heroes. After the match, Mazzola and his teammates gave all types of clothing to the Acerra selection.
(Photo: Massimiliano Iollo)
From that day, the history of the hosts will change forever: they will change club colors by adopting the grenade and even the coat of arms, choosing to be represented by the famous bull. The bond between Acerrana and Turin thus became inseparable, made up of mutual compliments at the end of each championship and sending local first fruits to Piedmont whenever possible. It is with an unusual desire to chat that a friendly grandfather sitting outside the municipal Civil Protection headquarters tells me about all this. He tells me he was one of the lucky kids shake hands with Valentino Mazzola and having sat on the lap of the goalkeeper Valerio Bacigalupo shortly after their arrival from Capodichino. “The strongest team in the world” he tells me joyfully. A smile that, however, darkens when with his stick he tells me to turn the corner and photograph the commemorative plaque affixed to the wall.
Of that evening when the doorman was paraded at the Acerra municipal hall Bacigalupothe famous defender Mario Rigamontithe median CastilianRomeo Saves – which has a stadium named after him a few kilometers from Acerra – A puddlethe elegant GabettoValentino Mazzola and Franco Ossola. Only a commemorative plaque, posthumous to the cursed Superga tragedy, experienced here as if it were a citizen’s mourning, remained to bear witness to that day. The dismay caused by that sad event is still alive in the eyes of this man, as well as of all those people who unfortunately experienced it.
Too little, for the great impact it had on the history of the Acerra community. Raffaele Barbato, a leading exponent of Fratelli d’Italia, has been fighting for this cause for years and declared through his social channels:
“In many Italian cities, but also in Campania, there are stadiums and streets dedicated to the victims of Superga and the Granata championships – explains Barbato. It seems paradoxical that Acerra, one of the few places to have had the honor of hosting them, does not pay homage to them. It would also be a way to restore dignity to the plaque in their memory which lies in a stadium that is no longer such“.
(Photo: Massimiliano Iollo)
Could the spotlight due to promotion serve as an incentive to look back at the past? Acerrana has in fact celebrated a few days ago promotion to Serie D after winning in the head-to-head against the grim Pompeii in a duel that ignited group A of the Campania Excellence championship. High school numbers for Toro, equipped with an iron defense that allowed them to collect the ball behind their goalkeeper and a lethal attack that allowed the attacking duo formed by Ilario Lepre and Salvatore Elefante to break through the roof of the thirty markings.
Among the skepticism of the square, which 12 months ago did not have a management present, a pool of players and not even a single element of the youth sector, the Guastafierro property has laid the foundations for finding itself then where we have arrived today, first of all by relying on a new astute and experienced sports director like Orlando Stiletti, already the protagonist of the category jump with Portici and Mariglianese, and on an absolute elite of Neapolitan and Campania youth football like mister Marco Miserini, head of the Granata youth sector and at the same time coach of the U19 selection which will play the final of the regional category championship in the next few days against Sarnese.