There are teams that compete against the standings, and others that, even more so, compete against survival. Hurricane Pirri belongs to the latter category in every sense: that of the championship that's about to begin and the far more demanding one of those who must figure out how to restart every summer.
The club, founded in 1959, is preparing to play its sixty-seventh consecutive championship in the Italian Football Federation (FIGC) : after Cagliari, it is the oldest club in the entire Cagliari hinterland. Sixty-seven years without a break, without a missed season, without a change of flag. A legacy of history and prestige that this year, however, risks being seriously jeopardized by a thousand difficulties. The first, and the most significant, has a simple name: there is no pitch .
No facility for playing, no facility for training. For a football team, it's like asking a factory to operate without a factory. Every training session becomes a negotiation, every home game a matter of hospitality, with costs, travel, and inconveniences falling on managers and players. All this in a neighborhood, Pirri, that has lived so much with football and now finds itself without a pitch to provide for its oldest team.
"I believe that by 2026, every sports club, which also serves an important social purpose, should be able to play sports," says President Costanzo Chessa . "It's absurd that Pirri doesn't have a soccer field."
Chessa founded the club in 1959, at the age of nineteen, with his brother Sebastiano and a group of friends. They chose the name, Uragano, to evoke strength and determination: two qualities that, sixty-seven years later, are more important in the office than on the pitch.
"We keep going because we believe in it, but continuing to carry on the Hurricane story is becoming increasingly difficult," adds the president. "There's not a single euro in circulation here, no one gets a cent: they pay out of their own pockets for registration fees, referees, and balls. What we're asking for isn't a favor, it's a minimum requirement: a field for the kids to play on."
