Trieste

Pietro Lo Duca pulls on the red and white for Trieste carrying a name the club already knows well: his grandfather, Giuseppe Lo Duca, was one of the two men who put the team together in the first place.

What they built went on to win more Serie A Gold titles than any other side in the country — seventeen of them between 1976 and 2002, alongside six Italian Cups and a Handball Trophy in 2005. I Rossoalabardati, as the supporters call them after the halberd on the crest, or I Duri Muli for the stubbornness that carried them through the leaner years, met their sharpest rival in Bressanone.

That history nearly ended in July 2024, when the club, weighed down by debt under president Michele Semacchi, went bankrupt. Federico Lanza put together a new entity, Pallamano Trieste 1970, with Adriano Dreos and Giorgio Oveglia — a surname the club had already seen on the teamsheet, not just in the boardroom. The new side kept the sporting title, started again in Serie A Silver, and returned to Serie A Gold for 2025.

Alex Pernic carried the captain's armband through much of that history before retiring in 2026. The club itself was put together in November 1970 by Lo Duca and Pino Grio, under a different name, U.S. ACLI Trieste, before the red, white and the halberd took over.