US Sambenedettese

San Benedetto del Tronto lived off fishing when, on 4 April 1923, three local boys' clubs, Fortitudo, Serenissima and Forza e Coraggio, merged in a room at Villa Cerulli and created Sambenedettese. They chose white and green as the club colours, hoops that have crossed a century of Marche football, and turned a town of fifteen thousand souls into the region's most vibrant sporting city: 21 appearances in Serie B and 43 in Serie C, plus a Serie C Italian Cup won in 1991/92 against Siena, the highest trophy in the club's cabinet. The golden decades were the presidencies of Domenico Roncarolo, from 1948 to 1966, and Ferruccio Zoboletti, in the 1980s, but recent history has mostly been made of refoundations, six since 1994, the price of a passion the town never abandoned despite successive financial crises. It plays at the Riviera delle Palme, seating almost 14,000, and the nickname says everything about local devotion: they simply call it the Samb.