Calcio Storico Fiorentino: Bare Knuckle Football

By: Bob | April 10th, 2007

Before football became the civilized and tidy sport that it is today it was Wild in the Streets in both England and in Italy. By some accounts, the early form of Italian football began in the 59 BC in the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence. The sport of giuoco del calcio fiorentino - a mix of soccer, rugby, Greco-Roman wrestling and bare-knuckle fighting - was played by the aristocrats on every night between Eipiphany and Lent.

According to the occasionally reliable Wikipedia:

The official rules of calcio were published for the first time in 1580 by a certain Giovanni Bardi. Just like Roman harpastum, it was played in teams of 27, using both feet and hands. Goals could be scored by throwing the ball over a designated spot on the perimeter of the field. The playing field is a giant sand pit with a goal running the width of each end. There is a main referee, six linesmen and a field master. Each game is played out for 50 minutes with the winner being the team with the most points or ‘cacce’.

And then there is this description:

A bit like American Football, or Harry Potter’s Quidditch, the 27-strong teams are divided into an attack force using all means possible to get the ball to one end of the pitch and a defense unit who’ll try anything to stop them.

In practice, that means two sets of lusty warriors trying to hoist a red-and-white sphere over two low wooden walls at each end of a sand-filled Piazza Santa Croce, one of Florence’s most famous squares.

In the meantime, one-on-one grapple bouts break out all over the arena, where a Green or a Red has a chance to grind a White or Blue’s face into the sand - perhaps because he stole his girlfriend or cut him off in traffic one time.

The wrestling ends when the ‘caccia’ is achieved and a point is scored.

After falling by the wayside for a couple of centuries, the ancient sport of calico was brought back to life in the Piazza Santa Croce where it is now played in the third week of June each year. But there is word today that the 2007 competition has been called off because some of bloody brawls that took place the past two years.

Below is an Italian documentary that shows a bit of how the game is played. It is not a game for the weak. One can only imagine what the hooligans would be like if they attended these games. Oh wait, they do attend them. They are the players.