On 7 April 2024, the Lodigiani-Terracina football match was played, valid for the thirtieth day of group B of the Lazio Eccellenza. The match, which ended with a score of 2-0 for the hosts, was surrounded by an excellent crowd, enhanced by the presence of around 150 noisy and colorful Terracinesi. The match took place at the “La Borghesiana” sports facility, located in the neighborhood of the same name in the eastern quadrant of Rome. Here the metropolis ends and the Roman countryside begins. The toponym of this area is linked to the Borghese family, who donated the lands necessary for the construction, at the beginning of the twentieth century, of the Rome-Frosinone railway (via Fiuggi).
As the teams entered the field, the Lodigiani ultras displayed a banner celebrating the history of their association: “Rome’s third team since 1972”. All fans of trading cards and almanacs certainly know the epic nature of this one club noble, who has played in 12 C2 and 10 C1 championships, but in this piece I would still like to write something about this reality.
Lodigiani was born in 1972. The role of the capital’s third team had been contested, until that moment, by Almas and Romulea, but the red and white team was destined to overthrow the city’s hierarchies, to the point of representing the third pole aggregation for football fans, supporters and bleachers of the Eternal City.
After winning the First Category championship in 1974, a long rise to the national categories began for the red and whites. 1983 was, for Lodigiani, the year of conquest of the Amateur Cup and, above all, of the historic promotion to C2, by virtue of first place in their Interregional group with five points ahead of L’Aquila.
Lodigiani was now on its way to great fortunes, not only in the first team, but also at youth level, a sector in which the Capitoline club has always shone, producing players of the caliber of Toni and Di Michele. Lodigiani’s lair became the glorious “Flaminio” stadium, which hosted, among other events, numerous finals of the Lazio Eccellenza Cup.
After numerous seasons in C2, in 1991-92 the moment came for Lodigiani to make another big leap: the one in C1. The Romans won their championship on equal merit with Potenza, obtaining mathematical promotion in the away match against Matera on 21 June 1992. A splendid decade began for the red and whites in the third step of Italian football, a period in which the Romans had the possibility of challenging important places such as Perugia, Palermo, Salerno, Avellino, Messina, Catania, Reggio Calabria and many others.
In the 1993-94 season the enthusiasm around the team was now skyrocketing, as demonstrated by the 1,500 season ticket holders who chose to follow it. The Romans, after an uncertain first round, decidedly reversed course in the return and combined a series of positive results which gave them access to the play-off, introduced for the first time in the Third Series in that year. Lodigiani challenged Salernitana in the semi-final: the first leg match was played at the “Olimpico” in front of a spectacular audience: as many as 25,000 spectators packed the stands of the Viale dei Gladiatori stadium. The first match ended with a score of 1-1, but on the return leg the Campania team clearly prevailed over the “Arechi” with the result of 4-0, which extinguished the Romans’ dreams of Cadetteria but not the awareness and satisfaction of having achieved a historic goal such as the play-offs for Serie B.
In the following season the red and white partnership added to its own palmares the icing on the cake of the match against Inter in the first preliminary round of the Italian Cup, a match won by the Lombards with a three-goal margin. Then, in 1998-99, the Romans achieved a dignified ninth place thanks also to the 15 goals of a young Luca Toni, who would later become world champion in Berlin with the blue shirt of the Italian national team in the 2006 World Cup. The 2001 season 2002 coincided with Lodigiani’s only relegation, which returned to C2 after finishing the championship in last place with only 23 points.
Lodigiani is known not only for her sporting exploits, but also because, as anticipated, a following has been created around her which has long represented an alternative to supporting Lazio and Roma (strictly in alphabetical order) in the shadow of the Colosseum. Our thoughts naturally turn to Ultrà Lodigiani 1996an acronym born following the unity established between the Ultras they Official Fans. This merger took place in 2000/01, but it was decided to include a reference to 1996 in the name because the two teams involved in the new project were both linked to that date. The word Ultra it was instead a reference to the desire to carry on genuine, simple and passionate support, supported by drums, smoke bombs and flags.
Among the most numerous away attendances in the golden years of the Serie C are worth mentioning the 100 from Avezzano, the 80 from Viterbo, the 40 from Battipaglia or the 20 from Giugliano, certainly positive numbers for the third team of a metropolis like Rome. The first season under the new banner saw the boys of the group present everywhere, an important result for those who decided to dedicate time and energy to the Lodigiani cause.
In September 2004, however, the Ultrà Lodigiani announced their decision to self-suspend, as AS Lodigiani 1972 was transformed, in that year, into Cisco Lodigiani (later to become Cisco Roma in the 2005-2006 season). The red and white supporters clearly opposed the new name, declaring that they would return to the steps only when a team with the Lodigiani name was reborn, regardless of the category.
That name, to which they were so attached Ultrà Lodigiani 1996is not dead: the “Lodigiani Calcio 1972” club, which boasts the “L” in the coat of arms and the red and white club colours, is a consolidated reality of Lazio amateur football and plays in group B of the regional Excellence. The banner displayed by the Capitoline supporters in the match against Terracina demonstrates how in Rome there is still the desire to cheer for Lodigiani, a reality that has never represented a specific neighborhood of the city, but which has always been a heritage of the whole the city, to which he gave a lot, as we have seen, both in terms of aggregation and on a sporting level.
Text by Andrea Calabrese
Photos by Andrea Calabrese and Marco Meloni
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