Grosseto

The Stadio Olimpico Carlo Zecchini is in Grosseto, a city of some 80,000 people in the Maremma, and its 10,200 places have twice been asked to hold a crowd watching second-tier football.

The football began in 1912, under the name Football Club Grosseto, and the black and white it started in lasted until 1927, when red and white replaced it. Those colours survived what the club itself did not. Financial failure in 1995 stripped Grosseto of its place in Serie C2 and sent the re-registered side down into the regional leagues; in 2015 the old company wound up after Piero Camilli left, and its replacement lasted two seasons before dropping into Eccellenza. In July 2017 the Cerri family bought the rights and put the 1912 back into the name.

Between those collapses came the years the town still counts. Massimiliano Allegri took his first job in management at Grosseto in Serie C1 in 2005, a season before Carl Valeri's goal on the final day of 2006/07 carried the club into Serie B for the first time. Stefano Pioli kept them there the following season. In 2009/10 Mauricio Pinilla scored 24 goals in 24 matches, the most in the division, and by the summer he had gone.

Serie D titles in 1961, 1973, 1995 and 2020 mark the returns rather than the achievements. The most recent of them brought the club back to professional football, and back to the Zecchini, where the terraces are rarely full and the Torelli play in front of a town that has watched the name disappear twice and come back under the same red and white.