Padova

The story goes back to a club that no longer technically existed. In 2014 the old Padova Calcio collapsed under its debts, was struck from the professional leagues and never filed papers for Serie D. What kept the name alive was paperwork: the failing company rebranded itself Football Padova purely to hold the trademark, while a freshly formed club, Biancoscudati Padova, started again at the bottom. A year later that new club reclaimed the old name, Calcio Padova, and with it the thread back to 1910.

There had been a peak worth reclaiming. Under Nereo Rocco in the late 1950s, Padova finished third in Serie A in 1957–58, a run still remembered locally as the "Miracolo di Padova," built around a defence anchored by Aurelio Scagnellato and the Swedish winger Kurt Hamrin up front. The club reached the Coppa Italia final the following year. It was as high as Padua football has been, and the club spent the following decades sliding back through the divisions before the 2014 collapse.

Alessandro Del Piero scored his first senior goal here in 1993, in Serie B, before Juventus came calling. Padua-born goalkeeper Francesco Toldo came up through the same academy on his way to a Champions League medal with Inter and the gloves for Italy at Euro 2000.

Recovery since the refounding has been steady rather than dramatic: a Serie D title in 2015, promotion back to Serie B in 2018, relegation the following year, then a Coppa Italia Serie C win over Südtirol in 2022 and another Serie C title in 2024–25 that returned the club to Serie B. The oldest rivalry sits closer to home than any of that — the derby with Vicenza, a fixture whose animosity predates the clubs themselves, tracing back to medieval friction between the two cities.

Home matches are played at the Stadio Euganeo, named for the hills outside the city, built to hold over 32,000 but generally fenced down to around 18,000 for safety reasons. It has been Padova's ground since 1994, a large shell for a club that has spent most of its history working out how to fill it.