LR Vicenza
.svg) | |||
| Full name | L.R. Vicenza S.p.A. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Nickname(s) | I Biancorossi (The White and Reds), Il Lane/Lanerossi, I Berici | ||
| Founded | 9 March 1902 | ||
| Ground | Stadio Romeo Menti | ||
| Capacity | 12,000[1] | ||
| Owner |  OTB Group S.p.A. | ||
| Chairman | Stefano Rosso | ||
| Head coach | Stefano Vecchi | ||
| League | Serie C Group A | ||
| 2023–24 | Serie C Group A, 3rd of 20 | ||
| Website | Club website | ||
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L.R. Vicenza S.p.A. (acronym for Lanerossi Vicenza), better known as Vicenza, is an Italian football club based in the city of Vicenza. It plays in Serie C, the third division of the Italian football league.
Formed in 2018 through the transfer to the city of Bassano following the company's bankruptcy, it is the heir, and de facto continuation, of the sporting tradition that began on 9 March 1902 with the founding of the Associazione del Calcio in Vicenza (often initialled ACIVI) and then transited through Lanerossi Vicenza from 1953 to 1989 and finally Vicenza Calcio, which went bankrupt in 2018.
It is the oldest football club in north-eastern Italy as well as the Triveneto and Veneto regions. It has played 30 Serie A championships, 20 of which were consecutive between 1955-1956 and 1974-1975: it therefore occupies 19th place in the ranking of the sporting tradition of clubs that have played in Italy's top flightand 18th place in the relevant perpetual ranking. The IFFHS lists it among the 15 best Italian teams of the 20th century.
Domestically it boasts the victory of an Italian Cup (1996-1997) and the Italian Cup Serie C in 1981-1982 and 2022-2023, while the best result at international level remains the semi-final of the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup (1997-1998); it also counts reaching the final in the 1910-1911 First Division championship , when it was defeated by Pro Vercelli, and the second place behind Juventus in the 1977-1978 Serie A championship , in which it achieved the best result ever by a newly promoted club in the single-round era .
History
[edit]
Vicenza, founded in 1902 by a group of citizens led by Professor Tito Buy, headmaster of the Lioy High School, and by physical education teacher Antonio Libero Scarpa, is one of the oldest football clubs in Italy. The formation of the first board of directors took place on 9 March of that year, while the competitive debut took place on 18 May 1903 in a friendly match valid for the Provincial Championship for Schools.
The official debut dates back to the 1910-11 championship: Acivi (as Vicenza was called for its first fifty years, from the acronym of the official name of the then Associazione del Calcio in Vicenza) inaugurated the new Borgo Casale ground on 12 February 1911 with a large victory over Bologna and in March finished the Veneto-Emilia round with a full score, qualifying for the final for the title. However, it had to succumb, both away and at home, to Pro Vercelli in its golden years.
Vicenza challenged Pro Vercelli in the double final of the 1910-1911 First Category championship.
In the years before the First World War it took part on several occasions in the national finals of northern Italy, which were played in a round between the winners of the regional groups. Vicenza thus met Bologna, Juventus, Milan and Inter several times, establishing itself among the best Italian teams.
Vicenza began the 1920s competing in the First Category divided into various regional groups. In 1921-22 it joined the schism of the great teams, going to play in the C.C.I. championship: it finished last in group A, a placement that condemned it to having to play and win the inter-divisional qualifiers against teams from the Second Division to win salvation. When the Compromesso Colombo was implemented, it faced the inter-divisional qualification which it lost against Derthona, thus leaving the top national division. In the 1924-25 season Vicenza won the elimination round of the Second Division after play-offs with Udinese and Olympia Fiume, but was then disqualified and downgraded to last place due to the irregular positions of the Hungarians Horváth and Molnár;[3][4] however, it was not relegated because the Federation repechaged it. Unprepared for the transformations that were launching Italian football towards professionalism, it was overwhelmed by the various tournament restructurings, until in 1929 it plummeted to the fourth level of the national football pyramid.
Romeo Menti
[edit]The 1930s were the years of redemption for the biancorossi, after a decade to forget. In 1932-1933 the team was promoted to Serie B, where it remained for two seasons, and then tried again and again for promotion to the cadets. In that period the ‘biancorossi’ churned out talents of the calibre of the Umberto brothers and above all Romeo Menti, captain ‘Neno’ Rossi, Bruno Camolese, Luigi Chiodi, Giovanni Costa, while the star of Piero Spinato, still today the player who has scored the most goals with the Vicenza jersey. In the 1939-1940 season promotion to Serie B arrived with a clear advantage over the second team. On 8 September 1935 the new stadium along the Bacchiglione river had been inaugurated, definitively abandoning the Borgo Casale pitch. In the inaugural match against the Hungarians Soroksár the just 16-year-old Romeo Menti, the player to whom, by a curious twist of fate, the same stadium would be named in 1949 after his death in the Superga tragedy.[5]
At the beginning of the 1940s Vicenza conquered the top national division, thanks also to a midfield line that went down in history as one of the best of the era and formed by Osvaldo Fattori (later at Inter), Alfonso Santagiuliana (who also played for Grande Torino) and Luigi Abeni, whose career was cut short by illness.
Serie A 1942-1943: the Vicenza eleven in Juventus- Vicenza 2-6.[6]
[edit]Serie A 1942-1943 ended with a historic salvation, won on the last day by defeating Juventus 6-2 in Turin on Easter Sunday 1943.[6] After 8 September they took part in the Veneto round of the 1944 War championship, but renounced the national finals. After the Second World War, Vicenza returned to play in Serie A, after the mixed championship of 1946. In the 1946-1947 Serie A, when the single-round championship returned, Vicenza surprisingly placed fifth (the team's best scorer was Bruno Quaresima from Vicenza); the following year, however, the team finished last (the only time in the history that Vicenza ended the championship as bottom of the table) and was relegated. In 1949 Vicenza came close to an immediate return to Serie A, which slipped away by one point. This was followed by several Serie B championships that ended in mid-table, characterised by economic problems.
Lanerossi Vicenza
[edit]On 26 June 1953 an event occurred that would change the history of the Vicenza club for many decades: the old ACIVI was bought by the Schio-based wool giant, Lanerossi, founded in the 19th century by Alessandro Rossi. This was not the first case of football sponsorship in Italy, which was still forbidden at the time, but instead a so-called coupling, i.e. a real takeover: the football club became a rib of the textile company, even carrying its name and symbol - the ‘R’ - on its shirts (sponsorship would only be allowed in the early 1980s). The logo remained on the red and white shirts until the 1988-1989 season.
Luís Vinício and Giulio Savoini, Lanerossi's flag-bearers in the golden twenty years in Serie A (1955-1975).
The injection of confidence and, above all, cash allowed them to set up a team that soon, after a season of adjustment, returned to Serie A in 1955 after seven years of waiting, with coach Aldo Campatelli and goals from Enrico Motta. On their return to the top division Vicenza achieved a surprising salvation with a ninth place finish. To the glory of the first team were added those of the spring training, which in 1954 and 1955 won the Viareggio tournament twice in a row. From the Viareggio team came players such as Azeglio Vicini, Sergio Campana, Renzo Cappellaro, Mario David, Mirko Pavinato, Luigi Menti and many others who later wore the biancorossa shirt in Serie A. In the second half of the 1950s, the offensive department was strengthened with the addition of two South Americans, first Américo Murolo and, in the following season, Francisco Lojacono, as well as the Vicenza-born Renzo Cappellaro.
At the turn of the two decades Vicenza placed with two consecutive seventh places, and in 1960-1961 the coach Roberto Lerici (a former biancorosso player in the 1950s) won the Seminatore d'oro award as the best coach of the season. Lanerossi maintained its characteristics of a provincial club, careful about budgets, that valorised young players, whether produced by the nursery or coming from other teams, maintaining a strong nucleus of flagship players, occasionally welcoming great players at the end of their careers.
Giovan Battista Fabbri and Paolo Rossi, respectively coach and striker of Lanerossi in the second half of the 1970s.
In 1962, the arrival of 30-year-old Brazilian centre forward Luís Vinício brought further lustre to the team. In the 1963-1964 Serie A Vicenza rose to first place in the league table for three consecutive matches, from the 7th to the 9th day, taking sixth place at the end of the championship. Luis Vinicio in the 1965-1966 season, in his year of grace, won the top scorer's table with 25 goals (it would take twenty-six years for a Serie A player to score that many: it would be Marco van Basten in 1991-1992), Lanerossi finished fifth.
However, great results were followed by years in which salvation was risked, often on the last day. Among the risky salvations, a historic one was that of 1972-1973, in which Lanerossi seemed doomed, but with three victories in the last three days managed to climb the slope up to a play-off againstAtalanta, defeated by an own goal. However, luck deserted Lanerossi in 1975 when, in their 20th consecutive Serie A championship, they were relegated to Serie B.
After an opaque 1975-76 season in which they even risked relegation to Serie C, Lanerossi went into the 1976-77 season with little hope. However, the new coach, Giovan Battista Fabbri, had an intuition: he transformed the young Paolo Rossi from a right winger with poor prospects into an excellent centre forward, leading Vicenza to promotion to Serie A. After a hesitant start, the red and white team proved to be overwhelming, thanks to Rossi's goals, the safety of libero Giorgio Carrera, the plays of Franco Cerilli and Giancarlo Salvi, Mario Guidetti in midfield, and the unstoppable Roberto Filippi.
Real Vicenza
[edit]Real Vicenza in the 1977-78 season, newly promoted and runners-up in Serie A
Only Juventus did better than Lanerossi. The team finished the championship in 2nd place and made it to the UEFA Cup: it is still the best ever result by a newly promoted team in the history of the Italian top division. Rossi became the new phenomenon of Italian football: in December 1977 he was called up for the national team and at the end of the season he won the title of top scorer with 24 goals, a significant figure for a 16-team tournament. In June 1978 Rossi was part of the Italian team at the World Cup in Argentina, where the Azzurri finished fourth and the centre forward scored three goals.
On his return to Italy, the knot of the player's co-ownership with Juventus had to be addressed, in retrospect a fundamental crossroads in the Biancorossi's affairs at the end of the 1970s. The deal was only resolved at the exchanges, with sums never before committed in a single football market session: Farina offered as much as 2,612,510,000 lire to secure the other half of Pablito's card. [7] The considerable outlay proved problematic for Vicenza's shrunken coffers, who were now forced to sell some of Fabbri's other best elements in order to recoup their investment in ‘Mr. Five Billion’ Rossi,as well as facing discontent from the rest of the squad due to the different economic treatment reserved for them. In this difficult context, Farina's plans failed in the short space of a season: on its European debut, the team was eliminated in the first round of the 1978-1979 UEFA Cup by Czechoslovakia‘s Dukla Praga, while in the championship, after never having found a real rhythm of play, it slowly slipped to the bottom of the table to an unthinkable relegation. [10] Lanerossi thus found themselves in Serie B and, two years later, even in C1; meagre consolation was the conquest, in the 1981-1982 season, of the Coppa Italia of Serie C.
A young Roberto Baggio in biancorosso in the 1984-1985 championship.
On 16th June 1985, even with the young star Roberto Baggio absent due to injury, on the neutral pitch of the Franchi in Florence, Vicenza, led on the bench by Bruno Giorgi, returned to Serie B after the victorious promotion play-off against Piacenza. The following year, the third place gained among the cadets seemed to have reopened the doors of the top division to the Vicentini, however, the CAF annulled the promotion due to the club's involvement in a betting scandal: the blow was so strong for the Vicenza square that in 1987 they fell back into Serie C1.
Vicenza Calcio
[edit]In the summer of 1989 the club, taken over by Pieraldo Dalle Carbonare, changed its name, bidding farewell to Lanerossi and its ‘R’, and became Vicenza Calcio. In the 1989-1990 season the team even risked relegation to Serie C2, in a troubled year marked by three changes of technical guidance. On 7 June 1990 Vicenza, led by flag-bearer Giulio Savoini, achieved salvation in the play-off against Prato on the neutral pitch of the Mazza stadium in Ferrara, with the support of an exodus of ‘biancorossi’ fans who invaded the Estense city. In 1990-1991 coach Giuseppe Caramanno was exonerated and Antonio Pasinato took over, but not even he managed to get Vicenza back into Serie B, a goal achieved two seasons later with Renzo Ulivieri. In 1993-1994, the Tuscan coach, despite not having any great strikers, managed to save Vicenza with a choral game that was to be the team's hallmark throughout that period. Even his successor, Francesco Guidolin, adopted a strategy aimed at emphasising the skills of the group and the action of the whole team rather than that of individual players. The following year, the performances of captain Giovanni Lopez, full-back Gilberto D'Ignazio Pulpito and centre-back Domenico Di Carlo brought Vicenza back to the top flight, where they finished ninth.
Winning of the 1996-97 Coppa Italia
[edit]Thursday 29 May 1997: the celebration for winning the 1996-97 Coppa Italia
After a very positive championship, in which Vicenza were able to achieve memorable victories against the ‘big three’ Juventus, Inter and Milan, as well as sailing for several days as league leaders, the team catalysed interest thanks to its journey as a revelation in the Coppa Italia, culminating in the double final against Napoli: In the first leg at the San Paolo the ‘biancorossi’ lost 1-0, but in the return, on 29 May 1997 at the Menti, Giampiero Maini immediately levelled the score; it then went into extra time where it was Maurizio Rossi and Alessandro Iannuzzi who made team history, scoring the goals at the end of the match that sealed the 3-0 final and awarded Vicenza the most important trophy in its history.
English ownership and UEFA Cup
[edit]Meanwhile, in the summer of 1997, the English National Investment Company took over the majority of the red and white club: Vicenza thus became the first Italian team to have foreign ownership.[13] As holders of the Coppa Italia, the ‘biancorossi’ earned the right to play in the Italian Super Cup, lost to Juventus on 23 August 1997 at the Stadio delle Alpi in Turin. In the 1997-1998 season, after their eighth place finish the year before, Vicenza were saved without any problems, but let themselves down a little in the championship, distracted by their commitment in the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup where, on the contrary, they surprised by reaching the semi-finals, ousted only by Chelsea, later winners of the edition. Decisive in Europe was the contribution of bomber Pasquale Luiso, eventually top scorer of the event.
With Guidolin's farewell, the following year marked the end of this cycle, with relegation followed by immediate promotion to the 1999-2000 Serie B championship, with coach Edoardo Rejaon the bench and a prolific attack in which Gianni Comandini, the usual Luiso and the young Cristian Bucchi stood out. Their stay in Serie A lasted only a year, however, as the 2000-2001 season ended with relegation to the cadets.
A red and white team that won the 1999-2000 Serie B championship.
Downfall
[edit]In December 2004 came the return of the club into the hands of local entrepreneurs and the appointment of Sergio Cassingena as president. From this moment on, Vicenza's history saw a decade in Serie B made up of last-minute escapes from relegations and three relegations on the field, two of which, in 2005 and 2012, were later annulled due to sporting offences committed by other teams. In 2013 this decade ended with the definitive downgrading to the third series due to cyclical financial problems, which led to a heavy deficit in the company coffers.[14] During the years in Serie C Vicenza was coached by the former ‘biancorosso’ captain Lopez.
At the end of the 2013-2014 championship Vicenza lost the play-out against Savona to stay in Serie B, but was reinstated in Serie B as replacement for the bankrupt Siena. In the 2014-2015 Serie B he team rose to third place almost reaching Serie A, but the play-offs were still fatal, this time against Pescara. In 2017, the ‘biancorossi’, meanwhile taken over by a new group of businessmen from Vicenza, relegated to Serie C, a fact that further exacerbated the club's economic crisis.
Declared bankrupt and placed on temporary administration, in 2018 Vicenza even risked relegation to Serie D, but managed to save itself by winning the double salvation play-off against Santarcangelo. Having definitively ceased social activities, the club's sporting title was withdrawn by the Italian Football Federation.
At the end of the championship, the entrepreneur Renzo Rosso bought the corporate branch of Vicenza Calcio and gave it to another team he owned, Bassano, which, thanks to a federal dispensation, moved to Vicenza and changed its name to L.R. Vicenza Virtus, placing itself as the de facto heir of the historical Vicenza football tradition. Vicenza could thus remain in Serie C and enrol in the 2018-2019 championship using the Bassano's sporting roster (this one in turn refounded and restarted from the Veneto amateur divisions). The first year of Rosso's management ended with the qualification to the first round of the play-offs, played in Ravenna and ended 1-1: this meant the elimination of the Vicentini due to the worst placement in the standings.
The 2019-2020 regular season, under the guidance of coach Domenico Di Carlo, a former biancorosso player, was interrupted early due to the suspension of the championship due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but, being in first place in the standings at the time of the interruption of the tournament, Vicenza was declared the winner of the B round of Serie C by the Federal Council of the Italian Football Federation, which made official the promotion of the club to Serie B.
The 2020-2021 season saw the ‘biancorossi’ achieve a quiet escape from relegation to Serie C; meanwhile, on 9 February 2021, the shareholders' meeting approved the change of the club's name to L.R. Vicenza S.p.A.[20].
In the 2021-2022 championship, instead, Vicenza found themselves at the back of the table; the climate around the team was also affected by the disagreements between the fans and the club, with the supporters expressing their disappointment for the lack of results and the absence of dialogue, while the management repeatedly retaliated harshly to them, pointing out the considerable investments made. Lane managed to avert direct relegation only on the last day of the regular season, but the descent to Serie C was finally sanctioned by the double play-out against Cosenza.
Again the following season the team performed below expectations, suffering many defeats that finally deprived them of the chance to fight for direct promotion; at the same time, however, on 12 April Vicenza won the 50th edition of the Coppa Italia of Serie C against Juventus Next Gen.
The 2023/2024 season opened with Coach Aimo Diana at the helm of the red and white team; after a first round that was extremely below expectations, the exit from the Coppa Italia of Serie C against Rimini and a fan base in full protest, the arrival of Coach Stefano Vecchi on the bench changed things, with a record 23 consecutive useful results. However, the streak was interrupted by the defeat in the play-off final against Carrarese.
Kit Manufacturer and sponsors
[edit]Kit Manufacturer
[edit]![[icon]](/wiki/File:Wiki_letter_w_cropped.svg){kind=small} | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (December 2020) |
Sponsors
[edit]- ?–2017: Banca Popolare di Vicenza[2]
- 2017–2018: Acciaierie Valbruna[3][4]
Honours
[edit]Domestic
[edit]League
[edit]Cups
[edit]- Coppa Italia
- Winners: 1996–97
- Coppa Italia Serie C
International friendly
[edit]- Benelux Cup
- Winners: 1961
- Uhrencup
- Winners: 1965
Divisional movements
[edit]| Series | Years | Last | Promotions | Relegations |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 30 | 2000–01 | - |  6 (1922, 1948, 1975, 1979, 1999, 2001)
|
| B | 37 | 2021–22 |  5 (1942, 1955, 1977, 1995, 2000) |
8 (1923, 1926, 1935, 1981, 1987, 2013, 2017, 2022)
|
| C | 24 | 2023–24 | 7 (1924, 1933, 1940, 1985, 1993, 2014, 2020) |
1 (1928)
|
| 91 out of 92 years of professional football in Italy since 1929 | ||||
| Founding member of the Football League’s First Division in 1921 | ||||
| D | 1 | 1929–30 | 1 (1930) |
never |
Players
[edit]Current squad
[edit]- As of 30 August 2024[5]
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
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Out on loan
[edit]Note: Flags indicate national team as defined under FIFA eligibility rules. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
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Retired numbers
[edit]- 3 –
Giulio Savoini[6] - 25 – Piermario Morosini, Midfielder (2007–09, 2011) – posthumous honour.[7]
Notable former players
[edit]Notable former managers
[edit]
In Europe
[edit]- Source: [8]
UEFA Cup Winners' Cup
[edit]| Season | Round | Club | Home | Away | Aggregate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1997–98 | First Round |  Legia Warsaw
|
2–0 | 1–1 | 3–1 |
| Second Round |  Shakhtar Donetsk
|
2–1 | 3–1 | 5–2 | |
| Quarter-finals |  Roda
|
5–0 | 4–1 | 9–1 | |
| Semi-finals |  Chelsea
|
1–0 | 1–3 | 2–3 |
UEFA Cup
[edit]| Season | Round | Club | Home | Away | Aggregate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1978–79 | First round |  Dukla Prague
|
1–1 | 0–1 | 1–2 |
References
[edit]- ^ "Stadio "ROMEO MENTI" | Vicenza Calcio | Official Website". Archived from the original on 29 June 2015. Retrieved 3 August 2015.
- ^ "Presentazione Ufficiale della Squadra" (in Italian). Vicenza Calcio. 25 August 2011. Archived from the original on 2 April 2015. Retrieved 26 March 2015.
- ^ "DOTT. MASSIMO AMENDUNI: CREDIAMO IN QUESTO PROGETTO" (Press release) (in Italian). Vicenza Calcio. 10 July 2017. Archived from the original on 3 August 2018. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
{{cite press release}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link) - ^ "Main Sponsor of Vicenza Calcio" (Press release). Bolzano: Acciaierie Valbruna. c. 2017. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
- ^ "Vicenza squad". Soccerway. Retrieved 5 September 2024.
- ^ "Ritirata la maglia biancorossa numero 3 in memoria di Giulio Savoini" (in Italian). Vicenza Calcio. 28 July 2015. Archived from the original on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 22 August 2015.
- ^ "Vicenza retires No. 25 jersey in honor of Morosini", Goal.com
- ^ "Vicenza Calcio at UEFA.com". UEFA.com.
External links
[edit]
- LR Vicenza
- Football clubs in Italy
- Association football clubs established in 1902
- Football clubs in Veneto
- Companies based in Vicenza
- Sport in Vicenza
- Italian football First Division clubs
- Serie A clubs
- Serie B clubs
- Serie C clubs
- Serie D clubs
- Coppa Italia winning clubs
- 1902 establishments in Italy
- Re-established companies
- Phoenix clubs (association football)
- Coppa Italia Serie C winning clubs