If Vicenza earn promotion from the Serie B play-offs and return to Italy’s top tier, they will rekindle one of the country’s oldest derbies with neighbouring Verona

On a Friday night back in April, Davide di Gennaro calmly dispatched a 92nd-minute penalty to earn Vicenza a 1-0 victory away to Cittadella. The travelling Vicentini erupted. It was another invaluable victory in their quest for promotion to Serie A and one made all the sweeter by the fact that Cittadella are local rivals.

The two cities are separated by just 25km and Vicenza fans undoubtedly enjoyed a moment of schadenfreude as their victory ensured Cittadella slipped further into the Serie B relegation mire. However, as the away contingent burst into song, their vocals were directed at one local rival in particular: Hellas Verona.

“Chi non salta è veronese, ooooo, ooooo, ooooo, o, o, o” (“Whoever doesn’t jump is a Verona fan”), bellowed the chant as a morass of red and white bounced to the tune of the famous partisan anthem Bella Ciao. For while every derby game matters, in the Veneto region there is none more fervent than that between Vicenza and Verona.

The two rivals were formed just one year apart, Vicenza in 1902 and Hellas Verona in 1903. Since then they have played the role of provincial upstarts, both experiencing spells of transient success in which they challenged Italian football’s elite.

In 1953, after Vicenza were saved from their economic woes by the fabrics firm Lanerossi. With their new financial backers, the club became Serie A regulars throughout the 1960s and most of the 1970s. This period culminated in their most successful season to date, when the goals of the legendary Italian forward Paolo Rossi steered them to second place in Serie A in 1977-78. Rossi’s exploits remain folklore and the story of that season is recounted regularly by Biancorossi.



However, Verona would go one better just seven years later when, under the tenure of coach Osvaldo Bagnoli, they won the Scudetto in the 1985-86 season. Inspired by the attacking prowess of Preben Elkjaer, Pietro Fanna, Antonio di Gennaro and Giuseppe Galderisi, they won their only Serie A title.

Yet more often than not, Vicenza and Verona have been perennial strugglers. Separated by no more than an hour’s car journey, the rivalry started in 1906 after the pair met for the first time in a regional tournament. Vicenza won 2-1 and since that day the rivalry has only intensified. But the Derby del Veneto is a rivalry that transcends football.

The Veneto boasts some of northern Italy’s most idyllic locations, from the floating city of Venice, to Verona’s Casa di Giulietta. It’s a region that takes pride in its culture and traditions, whose people are often keen to distinguish themselves not only from the rest of Italy but from those living just down the road.

The main avenue through which the Veneti express this local patriotism, or Campanilismo, is through their language. While often referred to as a vernacular, Venetian is a Western Romance language. The accent is instantly recognisable by its guttural yet rhythmic sound, perhaps owing to the Spanish and Austro-Hungarian rule in the region’s history. As a result, the dialects and accents vary from town to town, each with their own intricacies and tweaks.

For example, Hellas fans refer to each other as “butei”, Veronese for ragazzi (boys) while in Vicentino, ragazzi becomes “tosi”. Understanding the Vicenza-Verona rivalry requires a certain grasp of Italian history and there is an old Veneto saying:

Veneziani gran signori,

Padovani gran dottori,

Vicentini magnagati,

Veronesi tutti mati. Venetians lords and earls,

Paduans learned doctors,

Vicentini cat eaters,

Veronesi are all mad.

Venice was renowned for its commerce and merchant classes, while Padua was – and is – famous for its university and medical school. The Vicentini’s unflattering tag is thought to have originated from an era in which Vicenza – and the Veneto as a whole – suffered crippling poverty, leading to rumours that the people of Vicenza resorted to eating cats. The epithet has stuck.

As for the Veronesi, the presence of two psychiatric hospitals in the city (San Giacomo and Marzana) combined with the fresh air of the Monte Baldo mountain range is alleged to have inspired their “mad” moniker. Indeed, someone with an eccentric character is said to have “spirito Monte Baldino” – the spirit of Monte Baldo.

The adage also reflects the region’s civic rivalries. During the middle ages the Scaligeri (Scala) family made Verona one of the most powerful cities in northern Italy, bringing the territories of Padua, Treviso and Vicenza under their dominion. Vicenza remained under Scaligeri rule until the Doge’s Republic of Venice eventually broke Verona’s autonomy in 1405. But the antipathy between the cities has endured.

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In the absence of warring lords and despotic families, sport, principally football, has, in the words of eminent psychologist and philosopher William James, offered the cities a “moral equivalent of war”. In his book A Season with Verona, Hellas fan and author Tim Parks offered the quintessential summary when recalling the club’s first ever victory against Vicenza: “That day in 1912 the Veronese crowd, unarmed, discovered a new way of expressing their antique rivalry with their neighbours. For the first time they could take pleasure, unarmed, in their neighbours discomfort… You beat the neighbouring town at football and a collective dream is born.”

“The derby with Vicenza is probably more than a game of football,” says the football writer Charles Ducksbury. “Even Veronesi with no interest in the game hate Vicenza.” Charles should know. He has been following Hellas since he was nine years old and his passion for the club and the city is undiminished.

Charles has lived the derby, both home and away. He has had objects hurled at him, inhaled the smoke of the flares and sung his vocal chords dry. “The hostility can be intense. When they [Vicenza] beat us in our promotion season [from Serie B], the Vicentini were kept inside the Stadio Bentegodi for almost three hours because of the butei outside waiting for them.”

His last Derby del Veneto involved a trip to Vicenza’s Stadio Romeo Menti back in September 2012. Verona won 3-2 thanks to a goal from Domenico Maietta, something of a collector’s item given the defender has only scored three times throughout his 15-year career. Not that Charles had the pleasure of seeing this rare strike. “My impression of that game is that I hardly saw any of it,” he remembers. “Behind the goal is some huge netting to stop people throwing things on the pitch. So the butei hung their flags on it and, from where I was stood, most of the pitch was covered up.”

Back then the sides met in Serie B, a season in which Hellas won promotion while their red and white counterparts slipped down to Lega Pro. But in truth, the last decade has seen both clubs struggle, on and off the field. At Verona’s nadir in 2009, the club flirted with relegation to the bottom tier of the Italian professional pyramid. Even more recently, the future of Vicenza was in doubt after their financial malaise triggered talks of a merger with their city bedfellows, Real Vicenza VS.

During that derby in 2012, Charles observed that the hostilities between the two sets of fans might be easing, something he attributes to more stringent policing: “To be honest, I think that particular derby I attended was tame compared to others I’ve read about. Inside the stadium we sang all game, of course, and the Vicenza ultras had a couple of good choreos, but I wouldn’t say it was as hostile as normal. It was too hot. There have been many violent incidents in the past, but in recent years there has been less violence around the stadium, though this is more to do with police presence than the will of the fans.”

But other factors may also have contributed. The travails of the clubs mean it has been 14 years since they met in Serie A. Furthermore, the rise in prominence of Chievo Verona, haughtily dismissed by Hellas fans for their minuscule fanbase, has seen the intra-city rivalry intensify.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Giuseppe Colucci of Verona and Mohamed Kallon of Vicenza in action during their Serie A match at the Romeo Menti stadium in 2000. Photograph: Grazia Neri/Getty Images

“It is a complex relationship,” says Charles. “For years they were a second team of many Hellas fans, but now, of course, they’re not. It’s an important game now, because of the history of them using our colours, symbol, stadium etc. But to consider this rivalry above all others is laughable.”

It is Verona against Vicenza that really makes the blood boil and for Tim Parks no game compares: “In the end it always comes back to this old game with the magnagati, our cuginastri (nasty cousins). The one no one wants to lose, the one that will attract the most away supporters. No distinction is more urgent or more arduous than that between ourselves and those who most resemble us, the guys down the road.”

Were Vicenza to return to Serie A, the flame would undoubtedly be reignited. It remains a genuine possibility, with the Biancorossi currently competing in the semi-finals of the Serie B play-offs. They trail 1-0 to Pescara after having lost the first leg on the Adriatic Coast. However, with only three defeats at the Stadio Romeo Menti all season, they will fancy their chances of overturning the deficit when they meet on Tuesday night, especially with the backing of a vociferous home crowd. The Veronesi will be monitoring the progress of their rivals closely and, while they would revel in Vicenza’s failure, they would equally relish the chance to relive this historic rivalry on Italy’s grandest stage.

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In Serie A, the duo would not be vying for major honours thus the game would assume an importance akin to that of a Rome derby, which has traditionally been a season-defining game in the absence of tangible domestic success.

Outside the Veneto region, the Verona-Vicenza derby has been somewhat forgotten. But for the aficionados, it is one of the peninsula’s most fascinating rivalries. It’s a matter of history and pride. It’s the butei against the tosi, the mati against the magnagati. It’s an antique clash and one to decide the rulers of the Veneto. For those involved, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

• This blog first appeared on The Gentleman Ultra

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• Thanks to Charles Ducksbury and Marcello Casarotti for their help and insight