After the dregs of COVID, storico calcio e tornato!!! The annual historic football(soccer) tournament is back, meaner and rougher than ever. On Friday and Saturday, the semi-finals were played involving the 2 main neighborhoods of Florence. My team, since I live in Santo Spirito, i bianchi (the whites) played i azzuri (the blues) of Santa Croce. Unfortunately, we lost. Porca Miseria!
The final game is on June 24th, the Feast of St. John the Baptist, the patron saint of Florence. It involves a parade of the players, a rag-tag bunch of tattooed, gnarly, hunky, angry bastards from hell, from the Piazza della Santa Maria Novella to the Piazza Santa Croce. I will be covering this event, darlings.
Historic soccer is an interesting mix of soccer, rugby and mixed martial arts. Sometimes these guys just start beating each other up and no one seems to even care where the ball is. There IS a ball, though, and the idea is to move it from one goal area to the other. The rules were first codified in 1580, by Giovanni de Bardi, a Florentine count. It was a game enjoyed by the aristocrats who apparently enjoyed watching a rag-tag bunch of tattooed, gnarly, hunky, angry bastards from hell beat each other up.
Fabulous!
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment