Belonging issue three, Florence

Football in Italy is much more than a sport, it is an essential element of a city's life. It marks the rhythm with which days pass, loves are separated from sorrows and celebrations and disappointments overlap, all of which are faced while wearing the jersey of one's favourite team. Over the years, jerseys have gone from being uniforms used to distinguish players to being a visceral symbol of belonging to a community, no longer confined to the usual 90 minutes of play but present in every aspect of daily life. A feeling that Kappa wanted to celebrate in the jerseys made for the 2021/22 season.

After first going on a gondola ride through the canals of Venice and then getting lost in the carruggi of Genoa, investigating the relationship between knitwear and the city, today we move on to Florence for the last chapter of Belonging. Accompanying us around the Tuscan city is Omar Rashid, a lover of super heroes, founder of a creative agency and above all an avid Fiorentina fan. We wandered around the city, losing ourselves in the historic centre of Florence between the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and Piazza della Signoria, where Omar told us about his obsession with these colours: "purple for me represents passion, something irrational that colours my days".

As he strolls around, he tells us how his passion for this shirt and these colours is linked to two iconic players who have written some of the most beautiful pages in the history of the purple: Roberto Baggio and Omar Bastituta. Although Omar moved to Italy when he was a child, he has never had any doubts about which team to support: "here in Florence you can breathe Fiorentina everywhere and when I was a child there was Roberto Baggio in purple, so it was easy to fall in love. Then, after his dramatic farewell, Gabriel Batistuta arrived, whose middle name was Omar (like me), so it could only end up like that."

Despite the fact that in 1990 Roberto Baggio signed with Juventus, in one of the most contested transfers in the history of Italian football, triggering fires, charges and reprisals, he remains a player who always returns in Omar's speeches and thoughts. He is also present when we talk about Fiorentina today and in particular its renewed aesthetic. On the new jerseys made by Kappa, the old logo is in full view, the one strongly desired by the Pontello management as soon as they took over the club during the 1980s, and which had upset the fans because it looked more like a halberd than the historic lily. The stylised symbol inside a white circle bordered in purple together with the letter F, the team's initial, has in fact returned to prominence after years of absence from the jerseys. Symbols and aesthetics that Kappa and Fiorentina have decided to "bring back home", in the year of the club's 95th anniversary, to enhance and re-propose them to the new generations who have not experienced that period.

A choice appreciated by the fans and in particular by Omar who said he was enthusiastic about this return to the past: "A change that takes me back to the years of what is for me a champion in life, not only in football, that is Roberto Baggio. I think this operation is the best possible to open up to a restyling more in line with the times, which I'm sure will happen as soon as possible." In addition to the logo, the new shirts are also inspired by the club's history, with a design that blends the club's tradition with the Italian brand's PRO KOMBAT technology. The horizontal band that recalls the uniforms worn by the Viola in the 1980s, when the club managed to wrest Roberto Baggio from Vicenza for 2.7 billion lire, a record sum at the time, makes the link with history even stronger.

Like Venezia and Genoa, the first clubs featured in the previous chapters of Belonging, Fiorentina is also experiencing a period of profound rebirth thanks to Rocco Commisso, who has bought the club since 2019. In addition to the new stadium, which in all likelihood will be ready by 2026, and the avant-garde sports centre, the Italian-American president intends to bring one of Italy's best-known clubs back to the left side of the table, to the conquest of important placings and trophies. A revolution that has already begun since Vincenzo Italiano arrived on the purple bench, bringing new ideas for the game and new life to a team that seemed to have lost it some time ago.

An injection of vitality that both fans and insiders have immediately noticed. It's not only the points that attest to this situation, it's a feeling that permeates the city and that is also evident from Omar's words, although he now confesses that his obsession and passion is no longer able to affect his days as it once did: "Let's say that now I can tame emotions better and remember that it's just a game, so a very important thing." Although as he grows up he loses that crazy, pure emotion towards his team's games, the attachment to him is still very strong and you can see it in his expression as soon as he puts on the purple jersey first and then the white one for the photos in this article. Because as he explained before, everywhere in Florence you breathe Fiorentina and you cannot live without breathing.

Photographer: Eleonora D’Angelo
Stylist: Francesco Tizzano
Photographer Assistant: Danilo Cautero
Editorial Coordinator: Elisa Ambrosetti
Art Director: Alessandro Bigi
Talent: Omar Rashid
Production: nss factory