Centro Storico Lebowski

In Italy football is a very important collective issue. But in a reality that seams ruled by fake championships, numerous racist episodes, leagues without surprises, TV rights that transforms the game into goods, there is also a happy island.

The project I worked on in 2018 is about an extraordinary football community, the "Centro Storico Lebowski".

"Such is the path of a revolutionary: of disillusionment in hope, not the other way round", is the slogan of this football club founded in the heart of Florence (in the middle of Italy) in 2010. It based on the self-organization to rediscover the taste of an ancient and popular football. The people of "Grigioneri" (from the colors balck and grey) struggle against modern football, rejects its vertical system based on repression and regulation that produces only exasperated competition and no fun. The CSL belongs, first of all, to the "Ultimi Rimasti" (that means Last Remais), the ultras of the "Moana Pozzi" curve (from a famous italian pornstar), but also to the athletes, managers and sympathizers; the CSL is the football school Francesco "Bollo" Orlando, where kids learn first of all solidarity and sociability then play football; is the self-financing dinners, alcoholic rock and punk evenings, social and political initiatives.

Nowadays the CSL have supportes all over the world, from England to New Zeland, all supporters that share this football vision: a game that belong to people.

With this photographic story I tries to give back the values on which it is based, that is a different way of living football away from the economic profits, and in general the goliardic community life that characterizes this reality. In particular, I tell the last 2018 championship of the first team, which gave the jump in the Promotion, historical arrival point (but also of new departure) of a long and tortuous journey, full of defeats and daily challenges , overcome thanks to an indissoluble belonging between players, fans, managers, volunteers, sympathizers, furious lovers, but also thanks to a bit of healthy anarchy, which must be maintained in what is a game, the game of football.

In the next season, I plan to continue the project, focusing mainly on football school, financing dinners, anche the personal stories of "Grigioneri".