stadium had a capacity of 25,000 and was bordered on one side by a large stand with seats. Genoa’s stadium was designed with dressing rooms and even a special room for the referee.
Genoa’s ground was one of the first to give a team ‘home advantage’. Just next door was the more intimate ground used by their city rivals, Andrea Doria (who would later become a part of Sampdoria). Here the crowd was so close to the pitch that a claustrophobic atmosphere was created. This ground was dubbed La Caienna, after a French prison camp. Other stadiums, usually consisting of one stand and some terracing, were constructed by Milan and other clubs before and during World War One while Venezia built a stadium on an island in 1916.
In the years before World War One, fan numbers multiplied. Away fans began to turn up to games, and groups of supporters awaited their team’s return. By the 1920s, the strongest teams had groups of organized followers, and special trains were commissioned for away games. A 1923 photograph shows a group of Genoa away fans on a station platform. They have flags, banners (viva Genoa Club) and have scrawled graffiti on the train itself – including Fan Carriage and the rather poetic and self-deprecatory phrase: Foot-ball, acute mania. These were the first groups of obsessive, faithful fans, the grandfathers (and they are all men, in the photo) of the fanatical ultrà of the 1970s and 1980s.
Were there any tactics? According to some books, early teams tended to line up in a kind of inverted pyramid formation – a sort of 2–3-5 – with emphasis on attack and on kick and rush. It was only with the professional-style training methods of the first and second decades of the twentieth century and the modern coaching of foreign managers that the game began to resemble what we see today on our screens. The various alterations to the offside rules were also important in imposing change, and players did adopt specific positions on the field, right from the beginning (although tactical discipline was slow to take root). The birth and growth of the sports press, sports writers and football correspondents boosted understanding of calcio. Certain clubs began to be associated with specific styles of play, and with particular attitudes to the game, as with the aggressive reputation of Pro Vercelli, or Inter’s association with elegance.
Amateurs and Professionals
Early Italian football, as with the game in England, was strictly an amateur sport, played for honour, fun and physical well-being, but never for money. Payment of any kind was frowned upon. Most players had other jobs – as doctors, artists, businessmen, dockers, students. Amateurism was written into the statutes and rules of clubs and players caught taking money were banned. By the 1920s, this system had become unworkable. Money was beginning to flow into the game – through gate receipts, advertising, newspapers and journalists, and prizes. Working outside of the rules the bigger clubs began to employ coaches and pay players, using a series of tricks, such as calling managers ‘consultants’. Sometimes they were caught, sometimes they weren’t. Italy was slowly catching up with England, where there were already more than 4,000 registered professional footballers by 1914.20
From 1913–1914, Genoa’s star player Renzo De Vecchi, who was known as the ‘Son of God’ because of his precocious talent, was handsomely paid for his ‘work’ as a clerk for a Genoa bank. Other sectors of De Vecchi’s pay (and transfer fee) were hidden as ‘travel expenses’. Thanks to this new job, De Vecchi’s transfer from Milan to Genoa was allowed to go ahead. In general, however, before World War One, the federation dealt harshly with those found guilty of professionalism.
When Genoa poached two players from local rivals Andrea Doria in 1913, they were caught breaking the rules.21 Offered 1,000 lire each as a signing-on fee, the players accepted, but they had the bad luck to cash their joint cheque with a bank teller who was also a disgruntled Doria fan. Upset at the loss of two excellent players, the bank clerk copied the cheque and informed the football authorities. At first, the players were banned for life, a ban that was reduced to two years on appeal and then cut further by an amnesty. Both players proved to be excellent signings, going on to win three championships with Genoa and play for Italy.
The rationale behind the amateur ideal was ideological. Sport should not be played for money, which sullied the concepts of fair play and healthy physical activity. It was a leisure activity, not a job. These lofty ideals quickly collapsed in the face of the economic needs of clubs, presidents, players and the demands of fans for success. In the 1920s a number of very high-profile big-money transfers led to bitter public discussion and in the 1926 Viareggio Charter, professionalism was officially recognized for the first time. From that point on, players’ wages (as players, not bank clerks or lawyers) were subject to negotiation and the big clubs began to buy up the best talent. And it was not just players who were on the market. The best-paid football employees never took to the pitch themselves, but selected and trained their teams: the managers.
The first manager. The odyssey of William Garbutt
Foreigners had been largely responsible for setting up the game in Italy, and had been amongst the best early players. In 1912, Genoa became the first Italian club to appoint a professional manager. He was an Englishman, from Stockport, and was only 29 years old. William Garbutt had been a fine player with Reading and Woolwich Arsenal, before suffering a terrible injury while playing for Blackburn Rovers during a match witnessed, according to his own memoirs, by future Italian national coach Vittorio Pozzo. Garbutt’s salaried employment as Genoa manager was outside of the rules, so he was paid through a series of semi-legal means until the onset of professionalism in the second half of the 1920s.22
As with most Italian versions of early football history, the origins of Garbutt’s employment by Genoa are unclear. What is certain is that he took up the reins of power at the club in 1912, and went on to have a quite remarkable career in Italy. Although not a manager by trade, Garbutt introduced some of the modern training techniques he had experienced as a player in England. He planted poles in the ground for dribbling practice, and supervised jumping exercises, abolishing the desultory kickabouts that had previously passed for training at most clubs. In 1913 Genoa finished second in the northern championship and they went one better in 1915 in the controversial war-suspended tournament.23 It is said that the English manager also introduced a crucial aspect of post-match material culture to the Italian game – hot showers in the dressing room.
Genoa, which already had the best stadium in Italy, invested in the market, tempting players (illegally) from local rivals Doria and buying Renzo De Vecchi from Milan in 1913. Garbutt also used his contacts to bring over various English players. When war broke out, Garbutt returned to England before rejoining Genoa after the conflict, tempted by a wage increase to 8,000 lire a year. Genoa won the scudetto in both 1923 and 1924, and came close to a third successive championship in 1925.
Garbutt moved on to manage Roma in 1928, and then to Naples, where the team finished third twice in six seasons – their best-ever showing up to that point. Whilst in Naples he adopted a young orphan girl, Concettina Ciletti, an act of charity that endeared him to sentimental locals. The local press also accused him of hitting the bottle.24 Garbutt then took control at Athletic Club Bilbao, where he won a title just as the Spanish civil war broke out. In 1938 he began his third spell with Genoa.25 It is often said that the name given to managers in Italy – Il Mister – became popular thanks to the influence of Garbutt and other English managers in the 1930s. Even today players will refer to their managers as il mister in cliché-ridden post-match interviews: ‘who will play next week?’ – ‘decide il mister’; ‘That’s up to the mister’.26
