Pro Vercelli is the fifth club with the most titles in Italian football. However, it has a stadium like Excursionistas and plays in the fourth category. He lives on memories: his last Scudetto was won in 1922.
When football was born in the corners of Italy, in a small Piedmontese city, on the banks of the Sesia River, there was a brilliant team that later became a ghost and a mystery: Unione Sportiva Pro Vercelli Calcio, founded in 1892. Those were times when there were no World Cups and the sport was practiced with an amateur spirit and for the love of colours.
The Leoni team (Leones, their nickname) dominated the first three decades of Calcio, along with Genoa, which would later become four-time world champions. He obtained seven Scudettos between 1908 and 1922. Milan, Inter and Juventus, the three giants and also participants at the time, were left behind. In addition, he had an impressive run: between 1908 and 1913 he won five of the six Leagues. In 1910, Inter managed to push it back to second place. It was the Golden Age of the Piedmont whites. In that period, he also contributed nine footballers to the Italian team.
Pro Vercelli then had to wait for the end of World War I to win their next championship, which they won in the 1920/21 season. And he repeated the following campaign. The team was a sensation. So much so that he was invited to play in Brazil, which for that decade was already beginning to gain prominence in South America.
But the growth of the Milan and Turin clubs took away its prominence. And little by little glory stopped embracing him. But before going out forever, he gave Italian football to an all-time star, Silvio Piola. In 1930, at the age of 17, he made his debut and played for Pro Vercelli until 1934. He scored 51 goals in 127 games. By then, it was already inevitable to transfer it - professionalism had come. He was hired by Lazio, under pressure from the Fascist Regime. It was the continuation of a memorable career: Piola - champion with Italy in the 1938 World Cup, with two goals in the final included - is the top scorer in the history of Serie A, with 274 goals. It is no coincidence: the Pro Vercelli stadium - with a capacity of 8,000 people, similar to that of Excursionistas in its best days - bears his name and his last name.
Now without Piola, the predictable happened: in the 1934/35 season, Pro Vercelli was relegated. And I would never return. Six years later, it would suffer a setback again. And since then it has almost always hovered between the third and fifth categories of calcium. The worst, however, happened in 1990 when it fell to the regional categories. The only exception in this long journey, the only glimmer in the dark, was an honorary title: the Gold Medal for Sports Merit awarded in 1967 by the Italian Olympic Committee.
Now, with serious financial problems, he tries to survive in the fourth category (now called Seconda Divisione; ex C2). It is twelfth among 18 teams in Group A. The smallest big team in the world competes with a team with distant and curious names: the leader is called SudTirol; Ferlapisaló, Pavia, Crociati Noceto, Villacidrese, Carpenedolo, among others, also participate. There is an impression: even if they beat him often, none of them can ever be as great as Pro Vercelli.
Source images: ProVercelliFC
146.750 SRY