07-26-2024, 03:38 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-07-2024, 01:38 PM by wetwilleh. Edited 1 time in total.)
If people have been paying attention to the point tasks that I have been making, on multiple occasions I've discussed my love for calcio fiorentino, one of the many precursor sports that would, eventually, develop into modern football (the family of sports, not specifically American football). While this appreciation of the history of sport has initially been focused more on me dreaming of a team centered in the cultural heart of Italy, the fact of the matter is that I am not going to be handed the reigns of an ISFL or DSFL franchise anytime soon. However, what I have been handed is an opportunity to help grow the sport of American football through pitching locations for the next ultimus. While Florence may not be a city that most people think of outside of art and historical contexts, I believe the city is critical to help promote American football as an international sport, by showing an unbroken continuity of "football" in Western Europe that dates back thousands of years.
Football is less of a singular sport as it is a family of sports. American football, soccer, rugby, and even other sports such as Australian rules football and Gaelic football, can all trace their origin to common ancestors of semi-codified sports involving moving a ball, on foot, to a designated goal. The latter part is actually important; what defined football was, not as some soccer partisans claim, the ball being manipulated by players' feet. It instead referred explicitly to the fact that the sport was played on foot, as opposed to horseback, which actually tended to be the more common form of pastime in earlier time periods (see polo, chariot racing, jousting, etc). Due to how simplistic the definition of football is, on a historic level, it could be argued to have been independently developed across many cultures at many different periods of time. However. a sport literally called football is a late medieval to early modern invention, with the earliest mention of "football" dating back to the 1300s. If we can accept references to just "ball", without needing specifically "foot" in front of it, there are references to games that are clearly proto versions of soccer and rugby being played in England, France, and other countries as early as the 1100s. The point is, the history of football is long and complicated. That being said, most of the focus of English-language research in the history of football tends to focus on how the game developed in England, due to practically all modern extant forms of football being codified in the British Empire in the 1800s. All but one extant form of football, that is.
Calcio Fiorentino is a living fossil of a sport. The first attestations for a Florentine code of football dates back to the 1400s, with the rules surrounding the sport being largely codified in their current form in the 1500s. The fast paced, energetic, and violent sport quickly became an icon for the city state and a source of proto-nationalistic pride. Every year, as part of Lental celebrations, a tournament between the four sections of the city would take place. In 1530, in the midst of the Italian Wars, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sieged down the city state, but defiant citizens of the city famously played on anyways in the heart of the city, on schedule, like if nothing was happening outside of the city. While the Hapsburg forces would ultimately capture the city, the calcio tournament lived on as a heroic example of defiance to outsiders. However, even with its legendary reputation, no sport lasts forever, and as Florence's political institutions decayed, so did the interest in the yearly tournaments. While the sport was played into the 1600s, it slowly lost its prominence in Florentine culture, and by the mid-1700s the yearly tournaments stopped. However, its influence would still be felt in the development of football within Italy; "calcio" (which roughly translates to "kick", for reference) became the preferred name for football within Italian, with it eventually becoming the name for soccer in particular.
A depiction of Calcio fiorentino, from 1688!
However, in 1930, interest in the sport blossomed due to... well, its uncomfortable to talk about, but its important to be honest: it was interest in Italian history by fascists that led to the revival of the sport. The incident in 1530 in particular caught the romantic interest of Alessandro Pavolini, the leader of the fascist party within Florence. Wanting to link fascism with the idealized past of Italy, Pavolini helped organize the first modern tournament of Calcio Fiorentino in 1930, right on the 400th anniversary of the defiant tournament. It proved to be a massive hit in the city, and would survive the war to become a modern cultural touchstone of Florence to this day. While the date of the tournament was moved from Lent to the weekend surrounding St. John's Day-- in honor of the patron saint of Florence-- the rest of the sport is practically untouched from its early modern incarnation, including the ruleset. This is how it became a living fossil: it was taken from its original context in the 1500s, and transplanted to the 20th century, where it was virtually untouched. As a sport historian, it is therefore fascinating, as serving almost as a missing link between the ad-hoc, unorganized medieval games of "football", and the modern sports that bear the name. It's also, in my opinion, a beautiful game in its own right, being a wonderful mix of athleticism with sheer violence.
Calcio fiorentino (which from this point on I'm going to call calcio for short for the rest of the article) is played on a "field" that measures about 109 x 55 yards. For comparison, a football field in its entirety is 120 x 53.3 yards. While the field dimensions are similar (if a little smaller), the contents of the field is vastly different. Instead of grass, the traditional calcio field is played on dirt. Traditionally, the game is played in the Piazza Santa Croce, in the heart of the historic downtown. The plaza was unpaved in the sport's heydey, hence the dirt conditions. In the modern revival, the paved plaza is covered in a layer of dirt to simulate historical conditions, and to give some protection to players who are brought to the ground. The object of the game is to throw a ball into a goal area to score a point, not unlike soccer (but not limited to kicking the ball to move it). Teams of 27 duke it out in the dirt field, to use any means necessary to prevent teams from scoring goals. And I do mean any means. Fighting is explicitly legal. Not even penalized, but just an accepted element of the sport. As a result, the pitch is covered with players from both sides literally punching, kicking, headbutting, and other means of violent persuasion, to clear paths for the ball carrier to wade through the crowd and attempt shots on goal.
An aerial shot of Piazza Santa Croce on a normal day. On the left is the basilica that lends the plaza its name. Beside it, is a statue of Florence's most famous resident, Dante.
And the same plaza, transformed for match day. Notice the bleachers constructed around the square; while dimensions for American football fields are slightly larger, there still is plenty of room to fit a field in the plaza, if some rows of bleachers were removed.
That's not to say that calcio doesn't have rules about violence, but they're surprisingly permissive. It's more how fighting is done that is regulated, rather than regulating fighting itself. There is a strong prohibition of sucker punches; both parties need to be looking at each other and consenting to the fight for it to be legal. You can not just strike people from the back or the side without giving them a chance to defend themselves. This extends not just strikes, but even more familiar football-legal tackles: you can't do it from behind, only from the front. Another rule which heavily influences strategy is that, once on the ground, players are not allowed to get back up until there is a shot on goal. Knocking a player down to the ground is effectively removing them from the play. This doesn't prevent downed players from trying to drag more people onto the ground and continue fighting from there, but you are effectively out from being able to move the ball forward or block the ball carrier. I say shot on goal because that's also an important rule too: a missed shot on goal gives a half a point to the defending team. Due to the nature of the sport, this doesn't come up nearly as often as you'd think-- you're usually not shooting unless you got a clear shot to score due to how many players go down on the ground-- but it can influence games.
Tackling only from the front, people!
And an example of two players lining up to legally fight each other
And yes, there is still a ball involved. Nominally.
So how does any of this relate to football, and the ISFL? Well, I think one of the things that holds back football from being an international sport is the ignorance behind the history of the sport. The whole "handegg" meme infuriates me because it represents a fundamental lack of historical knowledge of how football became a thing. Football is football because its on foot, not because you manipulate things with feet! Calcio, representing a transitionary stage of the medieval game to the modern, is important to understand the evolution of the game. It's not quite soccer, its not quite rugby (which in turn would become football), it is its own thing entirely. And its absolutely beautiful for it. I think putting an ultimus in Florence would help highlight the heritage of the sport by harkening back to its roots, while in turn signal boosting one of the city's own cool traditions. And I want to play up those traditions! Traditionally you'll see pre-game shows featuring period accurate bands playing music and displaying the colors of the city state. Imagine how cool that would be for the pre-game show! It'd look like a renaissance fair on the field, in all the fun ways. While referees usually wear modern clothes as a means to differnate themselves from the players, I assume for the ultimus, that teams would wear their normal uniforms. So why not have the refs instead wear the baggy pants? Make them black and white, and I think they'd look unique and stunning. And for the halftime show, perhaps we can even have a couple of locals do a mock scrim (aka, beating the shit out of each other), just to add more of the local charm?
So how would a Florence ultimus work? I propose it works just like the calcio tournament, except held in its original date of circa February, instead of late June. The game would be held in the historic Piazza Santa Croce, converted to a dirt (not grass!) field. While our sport is not as violent as calcio is, it certainly shares more of the violence than soccer does, and I think it'd be a neat contrast to show the evolution of the sport. Temporary bleachers will be constructed around the converted plaza, much like for the annual tournament, even While this would not be the first ultimus held in Italy, I think the historic importance of the venue leads to putting it back in the boot of Europe to be well worth the revisit.
OK, I'm not a fucking artist. If anyone wants to make a more professional looking version of this logo, hit me up.
Textless version
So, what is the significance behind this logo? As you may be able to tell from the screenshots I posted earlier, the teams in calcio all wear different colors. There are four teams, referring to the historic four quarters of the city. Santa Croce itself is represented by the Blues (Azzuri), which is historically the most dominant of the four teams. Beyond them, there are the Reds (Rossi), which represents Santa Maria Novella; the Whites (Bianchi), who represent Santo Spirito; and finally the Greens (Verdi), who inhabit San Giovanni. Placement on the teams, at least historically, was actually based on what part of the city you live in. Nowadays, Florence has grown quite significantly larger than these four quarters, but team composition is still very much based on where one lives in the city. Also, if those four colors sound familar to you, they should, because they are the same four colors that teams were organized under dating back to Roman chariot races (there is a lot of history buried in this sport. I thought a logo for the Ultimus in Florence should try to honor the heritage of calcio, and I thought the best way to do so is to have all four colors prominently featured in the background of the logo. I tried to organize the four colors based on their rough geographic location. This was easy with the Reds and Whites, since Santa Maria Novella is significantly northwest of the rest of the city, and Santo Spirito is signifcantly south of the other two districts, and slightly to the left. However, Santa Croce and San Giovanni are both within the center of Florence, and pretty much in parrarel to each other. However, the basilica of San Giovanni is signficantly to the north of the basilica of Santa Croce, so I ultimately decided to put the Greens on top of the Blues. Purple was chosen as the text color because, if one notices, the uniforms of all four teams incorporate purple stripes as an accent color on the pants. Therefore, I believed it was a nice neutral color that all four quarters could agree on. The main logo is a fleur de lis, which is the traditional symbol of Florence.
Here's a bunch of men carrying the standard of the old city state, in a pre-game ritual
So, to briefly summarize, I believe that Florence represents an amazing opportunity for the ultimus to highlight the history of the sport of football by shining light to a pre-modern version of the game. Calcio is fun, exciting, and has more similarites to football than I think a lot of people on both sides of the pond would expect. By putting an ultimus in the city, and deliberately trying to play up the link, it helps establish that football comes from a worldwide, international tradition, and not just an American one. There is no other city, in Italy or otherwise, that would help highlight the sport's heritage quite like Florence. So vote for Florence, and enjoy some of the best sports you'll ever see!
Football is less of a singular sport as it is a family of sports. American football, soccer, rugby, and even other sports such as Australian rules football and Gaelic football, can all trace their origin to common ancestors of semi-codified sports involving moving a ball, on foot, to a designated goal. The latter part is actually important; what defined football was, not as some soccer partisans claim, the ball being manipulated by players' feet. It instead referred explicitly to the fact that the sport was played on foot, as opposed to horseback, which actually tended to be the more common form of pastime in earlier time periods (see polo, chariot racing, jousting, etc). Due to how simplistic the definition of football is, on a historic level, it could be argued to have been independently developed across many cultures at many different periods of time. However. a sport literally called football is a late medieval to early modern invention, with the earliest mention of "football" dating back to the 1300s. If we can accept references to just "ball", without needing specifically "foot" in front of it, there are references to games that are clearly proto versions of soccer and rugby being played in England, France, and other countries as early as the 1100s. The point is, the history of football is long and complicated. That being said, most of the focus of English-language research in the history of football tends to focus on how the game developed in England, due to practically all modern extant forms of football being codified in the British Empire in the 1800s. All but one extant form of football, that is.
Calcio Fiorentino is a living fossil of a sport. The first attestations for a Florentine code of football dates back to the 1400s, with the rules surrounding the sport being largely codified in their current form in the 1500s. The fast paced, energetic, and violent sport quickly became an icon for the city state and a source of proto-nationalistic pride. Every year, as part of Lental celebrations, a tournament between the four sections of the city would take place. In 1530, in the midst of the Italian Wars, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V sieged down the city state, but defiant citizens of the city famously played on anyways in the heart of the city, on schedule, like if nothing was happening outside of the city. While the Hapsburg forces would ultimately capture the city, the calcio tournament lived on as a heroic example of defiance to outsiders. However, even with its legendary reputation, no sport lasts forever, and as Florence's political institutions decayed, so did the interest in the yearly tournaments. While the sport was played into the 1600s, it slowly lost its prominence in Florentine culture, and by the mid-1700s the yearly tournaments stopped. However, its influence would still be felt in the development of football within Italy; "calcio" (which roughly translates to "kick", for reference) became the preferred name for football within Italian, with it eventually becoming the name for soccer in particular.
A depiction of Calcio fiorentino, from 1688!
However, in 1930, interest in the sport blossomed due to... well, its uncomfortable to talk about, but its important to be honest: it was interest in Italian history by fascists that led to the revival of the sport. The incident in 1530 in particular caught the romantic interest of Alessandro Pavolini, the leader of the fascist party within Florence. Wanting to link fascism with the idealized past of Italy, Pavolini helped organize the first modern tournament of Calcio Fiorentino in 1930, right on the 400th anniversary of the defiant tournament. It proved to be a massive hit in the city, and would survive the war to become a modern cultural touchstone of Florence to this day. While the date of the tournament was moved from Lent to the weekend surrounding St. John's Day-- in honor of the patron saint of Florence-- the rest of the sport is practically untouched from its early modern incarnation, including the ruleset. This is how it became a living fossil: it was taken from its original context in the 1500s, and transplanted to the 20th century, where it was virtually untouched. As a sport historian, it is therefore fascinating, as serving almost as a missing link between the ad-hoc, unorganized medieval games of "football", and the modern sports that bear the name. It's also, in my opinion, a beautiful game in its own right, being a wonderful mix of athleticism with sheer violence.
Calcio fiorentino (which from this point on I'm going to call calcio for short for the rest of the article) is played on a "field" that measures about 109 x 55 yards. For comparison, a football field in its entirety is 120 x 53.3 yards. While the field dimensions are similar (if a little smaller), the contents of the field is vastly different. Instead of grass, the traditional calcio field is played on dirt. Traditionally, the game is played in the Piazza Santa Croce, in the heart of the historic downtown. The plaza was unpaved in the sport's heydey, hence the dirt conditions. In the modern revival, the paved plaza is covered in a layer of dirt to simulate historical conditions, and to give some protection to players who are brought to the ground. The object of the game is to throw a ball into a goal area to score a point, not unlike soccer (but not limited to kicking the ball to move it). Teams of 27 duke it out in the dirt field, to use any means necessary to prevent teams from scoring goals. And I do mean any means. Fighting is explicitly legal. Not even penalized, but just an accepted element of the sport. As a result, the pitch is covered with players from both sides literally punching, kicking, headbutting, and other means of violent persuasion, to clear paths for the ball carrier to wade through the crowd and attempt shots on goal.
An aerial shot of Piazza Santa Croce on a normal day. On the left is the basilica that lends the plaza its name. Beside it, is a statue of Florence's most famous resident, Dante.
And the same plaza, transformed for match day. Notice the bleachers constructed around the square; while dimensions for American football fields are slightly larger, there still is plenty of room to fit a field in the plaza, if some rows of bleachers were removed.
That's not to say that calcio doesn't have rules about violence, but they're surprisingly permissive. It's more how fighting is done that is regulated, rather than regulating fighting itself. There is a strong prohibition of sucker punches; both parties need to be looking at each other and consenting to the fight for it to be legal. You can not just strike people from the back or the side without giving them a chance to defend themselves. This extends not just strikes, but even more familiar football-legal tackles: you can't do it from behind, only from the front. Another rule which heavily influences strategy is that, once on the ground, players are not allowed to get back up until there is a shot on goal. Knocking a player down to the ground is effectively removing them from the play. This doesn't prevent downed players from trying to drag more people onto the ground and continue fighting from there, but you are effectively out from being able to move the ball forward or block the ball carrier. I say shot on goal because that's also an important rule too: a missed shot on goal gives a half a point to the defending team. Due to the nature of the sport, this doesn't come up nearly as often as you'd think-- you're usually not shooting unless you got a clear shot to score due to how many players go down on the ground-- but it can influence games.
Tackling only from the front, people!
And an example of two players lining up to legally fight each other
And yes, there is still a ball involved. Nominally.
So how does any of this relate to football, and the ISFL? Well, I think one of the things that holds back football from being an international sport is the ignorance behind the history of the sport. The whole "handegg" meme infuriates me because it represents a fundamental lack of historical knowledge of how football became a thing. Football is football because its on foot, not because you manipulate things with feet! Calcio, representing a transitionary stage of the medieval game to the modern, is important to understand the evolution of the game. It's not quite soccer, its not quite rugby (which in turn would become football), it is its own thing entirely. And its absolutely beautiful for it. I think putting an ultimus in Florence would help highlight the heritage of the sport by harkening back to its roots, while in turn signal boosting one of the city's own cool traditions. And I want to play up those traditions! Traditionally you'll see pre-game shows featuring period accurate bands playing music and displaying the colors of the city state. Imagine how cool that would be for the pre-game show! It'd look like a renaissance fair on the field, in all the fun ways. While referees usually wear modern clothes as a means to differnate themselves from the players, I assume for the ultimus, that teams would wear their normal uniforms. So why not have the refs instead wear the baggy pants? Make them black and white, and I think they'd look unique and stunning. And for the halftime show, perhaps we can even have a couple of locals do a mock scrim (aka, beating the shit out of each other), just to add more of the local charm?
So how would a Florence ultimus work? I propose it works just like the calcio tournament, except held in its original date of circa February, instead of late June. The game would be held in the historic Piazza Santa Croce, converted to a dirt (not grass!) field. While our sport is not as violent as calcio is, it certainly shares more of the violence than soccer does, and I think it'd be a neat contrast to show the evolution of the sport. Temporary bleachers will be constructed around the converted plaza, much like for the annual tournament, even While this would not be the first ultimus held in Italy, I think the historic importance of the venue leads to putting it back in the boot of Europe to be well worth the revisit.
OK, I'm not a fucking artist. If anyone wants to make a more professional looking version of this logo, hit me up.
Textless version
So, what is the significance behind this logo? As you may be able to tell from the screenshots I posted earlier, the teams in calcio all wear different colors. There are four teams, referring to the historic four quarters of the city. Santa Croce itself is represented by the Blues (Azzuri), which is historically the most dominant of the four teams. Beyond them, there are the Reds (Rossi), which represents Santa Maria Novella; the Whites (Bianchi), who represent Santo Spirito; and finally the Greens (Verdi), who inhabit San Giovanni. Placement on the teams, at least historically, was actually based on what part of the city you live in. Nowadays, Florence has grown quite significantly larger than these four quarters, but team composition is still very much based on where one lives in the city. Also, if those four colors sound familar to you, they should, because they are the same four colors that teams were organized under dating back to Roman chariot races (there is a lot of history buried in this sport. I thought a logo for the Ultimus in Florence should try to honor the heritage of calcio, and I thought the best way to do so is to have all four colors prominently featured in the background of the logo. I tried to organize the four colors based on their rough geographic location. This was easy with the Reds and Whites, since Santa Maria Novella is significantly northwest of the rest of the city, and Santo Spirito is signifcantly south of the other two districts, and slightly to the left. However, Santa Croce and San Giovanni are both within the center of Florence, and pretty much in parrarel to each other. However, the basilica of San Giovanni is signficantly to the north of the basilica of Santa Croce, so I ultimately decided to put the Greens on top of the Blues. Purple was chosen as the text color because, if one notices, the uniforms of all four teams incorporate purple stripes as an accent color on the pants. Therefore, I believed it was a nice neutral color that all four quarters could agree on. The main logo is a fleur de lis, which is the traditional symbol of Florence.
Here's a bunch of men carrying the standard of the old city state, in a pre-game ritual
So, to briefly summarize, I believe that Florence represents an amazing opportunity for the ultimus to highlight the history of the sport of football by shining light to a pre-modern version of the game. Calcio is fun, exciting, and has more similarites to football than I think a lot of people on both sides of the pond would expect. By putting an ultimus in the city, and deliberately trying to play up the link, it helps establish that football comes from a worldwide, international tradition, and not just an American one. There is no other city, in Italy or otherwise, that would help highlight the sport's heritage quite like Florence. So vote for Florence, and enjoy some of the best sports you'll ever see!