When Vicenza played in Stamford Bridge

In football nothing sells more than a fairytale, than a team that came out of nowhere and then won a trophy. From Denmark winning EURO92 when they weren’t even supposed to participate to Leicester’s unpredictable Premier League title, the examples are countless. Every league, every competition has its own Cinderella that went against all odds and found a place in history. There are also teams that did not have a happy ending but managed anyway to capture the love of the fans because of the empathy generated during their run. This applies to Vicenza, an Italian team that won the Coppa Italia in the 1996/97 season and the year after played in the Cup Winners’ Cup. The team was coached by Francesco Guidolin and got really close to a historic result, their first ever European final as they only got eliminated by Chelsea in the semifinals with Blues winning 3-1 at home at Stamford Bridge overturning Vicenza’s 1-0 win the first leg played in Italy at the Romeo Menti.

Despite that loss, or more likely thanks to that defeat, Vicenza is a cult team among the nostalgic fans in football. Very few images manage to reminisce the Serie A in the 90’s like the Vicenza’s jerseys with large vertical white and red stripes sponsored by Pal Zilieri and worn by the like of Pasquale Luiso, Lamberto Zauli and Domenico Di Carlo. But if the 1997/98 home jersey oozed out regional football from every single pore, the second and the third jersey created by Lotto surprisingly winked to the future thanks to more sophisticated designs. Both jerseys had a diamond pattern slightly lighter than the jersey’s color with white and red details on the collar and on the side bands. As for the second jersey, turquoise diamonds created by small circles one next to the other were divided by cobalt blue diagonal lines. As for the third jersey, it was black diagonal lines to enclose grey diamonds. This jersey could have become legendary alongside that Vicenza’s team if that night 25 years ago, on April 16th 1998, an uncharacteristically yellow-dressed Chelsea did not break Vicenza’s enchantment by scoring three goals after Pasquale Luiso silenced Stamford Bridge with the first goal of the game.

As of today, that season represents the pinnacle of Vicenza’s history, the last real moment of glory. The team does not play in Serie A since 2001 and currently plays in Serie C, Italy’s third division. President Renzo Rosso, Diesel’s owner, struggled to keep faith to his words when in 2018 he said that he would have taken the club to Serie A in five years. Aesthetically things have gone vaguely better, even if there have been moments of tension like the complaints for an orthogonal striped jersey that replaced for one game the regular vertical stripe. At the same time Rosso deserves credit for bringing Fila back in football as the brand realized Vicenza’s shirts this season. The home jersey is characterized by a thin zigzag weave and the two tone-on-tone shades of red and a thin intermediate line that divides the white stripes. This jersey recently had a wide coverage as Vicenza won the Serie C’s Coppa Italia by beating Juventus Next Gen, Juventus’ second team. It has been a bittersweet triumph as ultras sent a polemical message telling the players to not celebrate and rather focus on getting promoted to Serie B. Hard times for a fan base and a club that lived far better moments as Derozer, a punk rock band from Vicenza, sang in of their most famous songs: “Your life has changed forever. It will never be the same after you’ve been there, after you saw your team at Stamford Bridge”.