FC Pro Vercelli

FC Pro Vercelli
	FC Pro Vercelli
Basic data
Surname	Football Club Pro Vercelli 1892 Srl
Seat	Vercelli , Italy
founding	1892
Colours	White
president	Massimo Secondo
Website	fcprovercelli.it
First soccer team
Head coach	Vito Grieco
Venue	Stadio Silvio Piola
Places	5,505
league	Series C , Group A
2018/19	5th place

The FC Pro Vercelli 1892 (officially: Football Club Pro Vercelli 1892 , Pro Vercelli for short ) is an Italian football club founded in 1892 from the Piedmontese city of Vercelli .

It is considered one of the oldest football clubs in Italy and was Italian champion seven times between 1908 and 1922 . This makes Pro Vercelli the only club that does not come from a regional capital that has won the Scudetto more than once. Hellas Verona , AS Casale and US Novese only managed to do this once. Pro Vercelli's nicknames are Bianche Casacche (German: white jackets) and Leoni .

history

The beginnings

In 1892, the Società Ginnastica Pro Vercelli, one of the first sports clubs in Italy, was founded by Professor Domenico Luppi. Initially there was only one gymnastics department, but a fencing department followed shortly afterwards. In 1896 the lawyer Luigi Boziono became the new president of Pro Vercelli. Under him, new sports were continuously added in which one could participate in the club, including cycling and athletics.

A football section was created in 1900 on the initiative of the student Marcello Bertinetti . The first jerseys were striped in black and white; because the black stripes had faded after a few washes, plain white was chosen as the new club color. The Pro Vercelli football team played their first official match on August 3, 1903 against Forza e Costanza from Novara with the following line-up: Francesco Visconti, Giuseppe Servetto , Albertini, Celoria, Biginelli, Novaglio, Negri, Milano I , Bertinetti , Carlo Servetto and Annibale Visconti . The second match was against SC Audace Torino .

In the 1906 season Pro Vercelli played for the first time in the Seconda Categoria, a second league, so to speak, in which mainly second teams and new clubs took part. However, you failed here on the second team from Juventus Turin .

The most successful years

In the 1908 season, the club was first Italian champion of the Campionato Federale of the Seconda Categoria and then won the Prima Categoria and thus the Italian Football Championship . This was the beginning of a series of successes. In 1909 you could defend the championship title.

In the 1909/10 season - the championship operation had been switched to the autumn-spring rhythm - the white jackets were well on the way to winning the third title in a row, but everything turned out very differently: Pro Vercelli wanted to postpone the final because they were on Had to play another game on the final day. However, the final opponent Inter Milan did not accept this. The President of Pro Vercelli then sent a youth team into the game, which made it easy for Inter and easily won their first championship title at 10: 3. The club's name was subsequently changed to Unione Sportiva Pro Vercelli.

Between 1910/11 and 1912/13 the US Pro Vercelli was Italian champion three times in a row. The success also meant that at that time a large part of the players of the Italian national team played at Pro Vercelli. Therefore, contrary to their name , the Squadra Azzura played their first two games in white jerseys, in honor of the Vercelli lions . This was because the Pro Vercelli players had not been admitted to these two games, as a punishment for the fact that the club had only used the youth team in the 1909/10 final against Inter Milan. On May 1, 1913, in the game between Italy and Belgium, nine Pro Vercelli players were in the team of Italy.

Due to the success in the Italian championship, the team was invited in 1914 as the first club to go on a tour abroad to Brazil, which included games against Flamengo Rio de Janeiro and Botafogo FR on the program.

First bear market

In the seasons 1913/14 and 1914/15, the US Pro Vercelli was unable to build on the previous successes. The Scudetto went to AS Casale and a year later, after a long absence, to the record champions CFC Genoa . As a result of the First World War , gaming operations had to be completely suspended. Only in 1915/16 could a tournament be held with the Coppa Federale , which AC Milan won. After the end of the war in 1918 Pro Vercelli continued as before, again the team was unable to completely convince and was eliminated in the semifinals.

Recent successes

In the seasons 1920/21 and 1921/22 the US Pro Vercelli was able to build on earlier successes and won the Scudetto twice. Another highlight came in 1922 when Liverpool FC (one of the best teams in the world at the time) also played against Pro Vercelli on their European tour. Vercelli defeated the English and Guido Ara , the then team captain of Vercelli, then announced the following: You haven't defeated us today, and you'll never ever succeed in! (German: You didn't conquer us today, and you will never succeed!). This was to prove to be true in the following, because Pro Vercelli was never able to build on the successes of that time and therefore there was no further clash between Liverpool and Vercelli.

The decline

By the end of the 1920s, the top team became a team that positioned itself in the midfield of the highest Italian league. In the season 1929/30 , the club again made history when Luigi Bajardi the first goal in the newly formed Serie A scoring. In the season 1934/35 followed the descent into Serie B and six seasons later they rose even in the Series C from. After the Second World War they started again in Serie B, but in 1947/48 they were relegated to third division. As a result, Pro Vercelli played mostly in Serie C, or even in the IV. Series, which later in the then fourth-rate series D was renamed. In the mid-1950s, the US Pro Vercelli rose again to the C series, but they rose again in 1963. In 1970/71, the promotion succeeded again, after an all-important coin toss by Captain Rossi in the Olympic Stadium in Turin , after Vercelli and AS Biellese had tied on points after the championship and the two playoffs had also ended with two draws (4: 4 and 2: 2). In 1977/78 they descended into the newly created C2 series . In the following season, the crash into the meanwhile fifth-rate Serie D followed, before you could return to Serie C2 in the mid-1980s. After relegated back to Serie D, it was not until 1993/94 that they were promoted to Serie C2, when Pro Vercelli became Italian amateur champion ( Scudetto Dilettanti ).

Bankruptcy and Renaissance: Return to Series B

Then Pro Vercelli belonged to the 4th division for 17 years. 1995 and 2001 failed in the play-off games for promotion to the third-class Serie C1 (formerly Serie C) at the AC Lumezzane and the AC Mestre . Between 2003 and 2005, however, the club only narrowly escaped relegation to the fifth division. Twice he successfully defended himself in the play-out games, once he benefited from the forced relegation of other clubs.

After the twelfth place in the now in Lega Pro Seconda Divisione renamed the fourth highest division, US Pro Vercelli was excluded on July 16, 2010. In order to prevent the liquidation of the traditional club, the city decided to merge with AS Pro Belvedere Vercelli, which had just been relegated to the fifth-class Serie D, but was able to remain in the fourth division due to vacancies. The merger club was thus allowed to remain in the Lega Pro Seconda Divisione under the new name FC Pro Vercelli 1892.

In the 2010/11 season, the club qualified with third place straight away for the promotion games in the third-class Lega Pro Prima Divisione , the former C1 series. Here, however, they lost to Aurora Pro Patria 2: 5 and 2: 0. After 34 years, Pro Vercelli made the long-awaited return to the third-highest Italian division through numerous forced relegations from other clubs. Just one year later, in the 2011/12 season, they even managed to get promoted to Serie B. After 64 years, FC Pro Vercelli played second class for the first time in 2012/13 . With 21st place, however, the direct relegation followed.

In the following season 2013/14 the direct promotion to Serie B succeeded. After the first half of the second division season 2014/15, the club was surprisingly good on a relegation place for promotion to the first division (Serie A).

The current trainer is Alberto Gilardino .

Former players

Former trainers

Web links

Commons : FC Pro Vercelli - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Official website of FC Pro Vercelli (Italian)