This is the history of Associazione Calcio Legnano, commonly referred to as Legnano, an Italian football club based in Legnano, Lombardy. The club last played in Serie A in 1954 and has since played in the lower divisions of Italian football.
The origins of soccer in Legnano (1906-1912) In the early years of the 20th century, soccer began to leave the aristocratic salons and become a popular national sport.. The team that dominated the fledgling Italian league at the time was Pro Vercelli, which prevailed in five seasons between 1908 and 1913. In the early days of the sport's history, teams from non-metropolitan municipalities also played an important role. In this context, the Italian national football team was founded in 1910.
In the historical framework just mentioned, the first noteworthy experiment of setting up a representative soccer team of the city of Legnano is related to a sports team that competed in 1906, on a fallow field near San Giorgio su Legnano, against Aurora of Busto Arsizio, which then won the match 2 to 1; this was thus the first "derby" between a Legnano soccer team and a Busto Arsizio team... Edgardo Palmieri, a journalist for the sports periodical Il Lilla, active in Legnano from 1923 to 1925, wrote a series of articles on pioneering Legnano soccer, an excerpt of which reads:
The aforementioned Legnano team, which was given the name Football Club Legnano, from 1907 had a well-defined corporate organization. This first Legnano football club was born on the initiative of Serafino Triulzi and had, as its uniform, a white jersey and black shorts.. This team began playing, also from 1907, on a field made available by the Wolsit company of Legnano that was located along the modern Via XX Settembre. The interest of a local company in a football team was no coincidence: the sport was in fact a way to introduce the national public to the city of Legnano and - by extension - to the factories that formed the city's economic backbone.
In 1908 this first Football Club Legnano changed its uniform from a white shirt to a white and blue one.. The team participated in organized football matches with local teams and was in business until 1911 recording good sporting successes such as victories in the Seveso Cup and Brunate Cup. Edgardo Palmieri, again, described this first failed experiment thus:
The foundation of Football Club Legnano and the first seasons (1913-1919) The second attempt, on the other hand, had continuity and had its genesis in 1912, when G.G. Piazza of AC Milan and G.M. Riva of RFC Liege, both residents of Legnano for work purposes, began to test the ground with the intention of founding a new soccer team representative of the city of the Carroccio.
The response of the townspeople was positive, and thus, during an assembly organized in 1912 at a hall of the “Carroccio” hotel, the first board of directors formed by G.M. Riva (president), Agosti (secretary), G.G. Piazza, Bonacina, Venegoni, Schiatti, Ruggeri, Lamberti, Vigo and Lorenzini (directors) approved the statute of incorporation of the Legnan Football Club, decreeing at the same time that the social colors would be red and black.. The choice fell on these two colors perhaps to recall the uniform of Milan, which had recently been founded in the Lombard capital. The new club also used, for official matches and training, the aforementioned playing field provided by Wolsit. Later the management set out to find a proper playing field: the field, equipped and fenced, was then built in Via Lodi at the expense of the Legnanese metalworking company Franco Tosi and the industrialist Antonio Bernocchi.. In this way the new playing field, due to the fencing, could allow paid admission of the public and the consequent financial income due to ticket sales.
The first actual president of the new club, however, was Aldo Visconti, who replaced G.M. Riva almost immediately, while Eugenio Tosi was elected as honorary president, with Engineer Bombaglio being voted vice-president. On the occasion of this change at the top of the club, the Legnano that still exists today was officially founded: in fact, during the first board meeting the new name of the club, Football Club Legnano, which recalled the name of the 1906 club, was decreed, as well as the new corporate color, lilac, which was never changed again.
Part of the directors of the newly formed club came from the team set up by Serafino Triulzi in 1906. However, the foundation date of the club that is still active today is not known, as there is no trace of it in the archival documents: therefore, January 1, 1913 is a symbolic foundation date: the date of the establishment of the club can be traced between January and August 1913, as the first official season played by Legnano was the 1913-1914 championship.Cf. www.statistichelilla.it/home.htm .
In light of the promising results achieved in the first matches, Antonio Bernocchi began to generously finance the newly formed club, laying the foundation for future participation in the top leagues of Italian soccer. The team enrolled in the 1913-1914 Third Category championship, the third level of the Italian soccer pyramid at the time, finishing 7th and penultimate in the Lombardy Regional Committee's group A, and being eliminated from the Saronno Cup and the Victoria Tournament.. The team's performance was judged, by the lilac management, not up to expectations; at the end of the season it was therefore decided to reinforce the roster with the purchase of new players.
In the 1914-1915 season, being equipped with a fenced and homologated field larger than 90x45 m, the Lilla entered the Lombard Promozione, the second level of Italian soccer in those years. They competed in group A, where they finished sixth and last, a result that fell short of expectations also due to the team's withdrawal from the championship with three days to go.. Legnano's withdrawal was caused by the departure of three players to the front (World War I had in fact broken out) and the injury of lilla captain Oldrini, who broke his leg during a match. Due to the team's voluntary withdrawal, the last three days were ruled forfeited. These negative results led to a deep corporate crisis; on this occasion, Legnano came close to dissolution, which was avoided with the reorganization of management.
In 1915 all official activity ceased due to the outbreak of war. Players not engaged at the front continued to practice sports activities and the lilac club took part in friendly matches and some tournaments run by teams affiliated with the F.I.G.C.. There were several successes in the various local football events, which allowed Legnano to compete against the likes of Milan, Inter, Unione Sportiva Milanese and Torino..
Following the brilliant results achieved in friendly matches before the start of the season, and as a result of the purchase of some promising players, the club decided to have the team participate in second-tier tournaments organized by clubs affiliated with the F.I.G.C.. In particular, in the 1915-1916 season, Legnano achieved a prestigious 2nd place at the Coppa Internazionale behind Saronno, won the Lombardy Cup and won the Vannucci Cup. The Lombardy Cup was the first important trophy won by the Lilla.
At the beginning of the 1916-1917 season, Antonio Bernocchi became president of Legnano. In this championship the team successfully participated in tournaments organized by clubs affiliated with the F.I.G.C., also thanks to the arrival of promising players, finishing 2nd in the Lombardy Cup, the Boneschi Cup and the Val d'Olona Cup and winning the Bernocchi Ball Trophy over Spezia... With the three wins over Inter and the success over Milan in the Lombardy Cup, interest around the Lilla began to grow. Compared to the first seasons, the quality of play had also significantly improved.
In the 1917-1918 season, Legnano finished 3rd in the Mauro Cup and won the Saronno Cup. Noteworthy was an event that happened during the Mauro Cup.. On the second day, Legnano was defeated at home by Milan 3-2, but a 2-0 forfeit was decreed in favor of the Rossoneri due to some incidents that broke out on and off the playing field. On the occasion, the field in Via Lodi was subjected to a suspension, which was the first one suffered by a Legnano playing field.
In the 1918-1919 season, the most important result achieved by the Lilla was the victory in the Mauro Cup, which allowed Legnano to enter, in the following season, the First Category, the highest level of the Italian football pyramid at the time, since the trophy dedicated to Francesco Mauro was considered a first-tier tournament. As a result of this victory, the Lilla's notoriety grew significantly.. On the sidelines of the Mauro Cup a noteworthy episode happened: in the aftermath of Legnano's victory over Inter, the Gazzetta dello Sport assigned - in its columns - the success to the Nerazzurri. Lilla fans vehemently protested and gathered in a sit-in in Piazza Monumento, where they burned some copies of the newspaper under the monument to the Warrior of Legnano. The next day the newspaper apologized, rectifying the error. In the same season Legnano finished 2nd in the Giuriati Cup and the Targa Burba, and 4th in the Biffi Cup.
In the top division (1919-1926) With the end of World War I, the federal championships organized by the F.I.G.C. restarted. The Lilla played their first official season in the First Category 1919-1920 by being placed in the Lombardy Group C where they finished second in the five-team tournament behind Milanese. They then played in Group A of the national semifinals with big name teams such as Alessandria, Milan, Genoa, Pro Vercelli and Venezia, finishing fifth and failing to qualify for the national finals... Noteworthy was the victory, on the third day of Group A of the national semifinals, over multi-time champion Pro Vercelli by 2-1. Another important event was the call-up of lilla goalkeeper Angelo Cameroni to the national team; Cameroni played only one match on the national team, the friendly Italy-France on January 18, 1920, which ended 9-4 for the Azzurri.