La Maddalena, Ilva turns 120: with Torres it is the oldest sports club in Sardinia
The foundation in the distant 1903 by Antonio Cappai, Pietro Sabattini and Enrico Balata
The oldest, together with Torres, a Sardinian football club, turns 120 years old . The root of its name, Ilva , has remained unchanged since 1903 although over time there have been some extensions, up to the current final one: first in Ilvasenal, then in IlvaMarisardegna and more recently in Ilvamaddalena, which this year competes in the championship of D series
In fact, the La Maddalena team was born as a gymnastics club , founded by Antonio Cappai, a municipal surveyor, who was its first president, Pietro Sabattini, also a municipal employee, and Enrico Balata, an elementary school teacher and gymnastics instructor.
It was a multi-sports club in which very young people from La Maddalena practiced running, swimming, cycling, gymnastics, fencing and football. Running and cycling in the dusty and impervious streets of Maddalena, gymnastics and fencing in a shed, swimming in the sea of Cala Gavetta and football in the large square, called della Renella, which for many years divided civil and military La Maddalena, then Faravelli military camp and from the early 1930s to the Comunale.
And the presence of the Regia Marina first and then of the Navy then wrote part of the history of the island club (already from before the Great War which became almost exclusively football), both because young soldiers have always played in it, particularly conscripts, even from from the Continent and also militants, before military service, in higher categories, and because many local footballers or from neighboring countries worked, as civilians, at the island's military establishments, from the Arsenal to the Cemm Schools.
Moreover, the name of Ilvasenal , which the island team assumed for a few decades , referred precisely to the military Arsenal like that of Ilva Marisardegna which the biancocelesti assumed towards the end of the 80s (with the promotion to Serie C2), when the island was still the seat of the admiralty.
Ilva's militancy has seen in these 120 years of history participation in regional championships in general, from Promotion to Excellence, with bets in the Fourth Series, in C2 in 1988 and now in Serie D. Whether it was and is the "team" of La Maddalena has always confirmed it and confirms the fact that it wears its colours, the biancocelesti ones . And as for the playing field, after the first few years in which it played matches in Command Square, for about 90 years it played at the municipal , the "lion's den", renamed Pietro Secci for a few decades, the legendary president of a period team gold.
In recent years Ilvamaddalena (name assumed by the merger between Ilva and Maddalena) plays in the new stadium Salvatore Zichina (great sportsman and coach) where they obtained promotion to Serie D.
In the meantime , important renovation works are about to be completed at the Pietro Secci and it is not said that the old and glorious "white and blue foot" will not trample it again, perhaps as early as this year, at least to celebrate this important birthday.
