U.C.C. Pozzuolo

Pozzuolo del Friuli is a village of a few thousand souls south of Udine, with a place in Italian history books for the 1917 cavalry charge that covered the retreat to the Piave, and a place in this collection for the more peaceful feat of 2001/02: playing Serie D, the fifth national tier, in the same group as cities like Pordenone and Belluno. The club is called Unione Calcio Comunale, the municipal football union, a name that says everything about its nature: a common home for the villages of the district, with a ground on Via Failutti and a green and white shirt. After the Serie D peak came the long descent to the Terza Categoria, the bottom rung of Italian football, where Pozzuolo today keeps doing what it always did: getting the village to play on Sunday. Few stories sum up the calcio pyramid better: the same crest has known the championship of the almost professionals and the championship from which there is no further relegation, and dressed them both in the same hoops.