In Italy, women’s soccer began its activity almost simultaneously in various cities: Milan, Rome (Ostia), Travo (Piacenza), Viareggio, Genoa and Turin. In 1968 the Federazione Italiana Calcio Femminile (Italian Women’s Football Federation) was founded in Viareggio, and in the same year it promoted its first national championship, won by Genoa. The FICF managed in a short time to create a complex competitive system, with two series of championships (A and B) to which a Cup tournament was added in 1971. Although quantitatively modest, women’s soccer has played a role in the international panorama that is not second to none.
Born in Venice in 1964, Carolina Morace, just fourteen years old, made her debut in the national team in 1978. At the end of this long and successful career, she made headlines on CNN and in Time magazine for being hired as a coach in Viterbese. She was the first woman in Europe to lead a professional men’s team.
Sixty years later, in spite of various successes and in spite of the competence and talent of the players, the fate of women’s soccer in Italy is still strongly conditioned by conservatism and by a sensitivity resistant to the evolution of customs and culture.
In 2018, the Nazionale Cantanti (National Singers Soccer Team) received the same funds as Di.Re – Women in Network Against Violence for the prevention of gender-based violence. In May 2021, Aurora Leone was invited to take part in the Partita del Cuore, a charity football match that takes place every year, but the night before it she was kicked out of the participants’ dinner because she was a woman. Gianluca Pecchini, manager of the national team, invited Leone to get up from the table saying “Since when do women play soccer?”.
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