The origins
It is usually difficult to get historical-sporting information on associations that were still born in the last century. The problems are mainly due to loss of data and news due to the displacement of offices and destruction of archives due to wars. Fortunately for us, the Society for Physical Education "Mediolanum" has been able to preserve and pass on a precious wealth of memorabilia, photographs and material that still allow us to go back a century to tell the story of its birth.
The news found, through the Milanese newspaper “Il Secolo”, suggests that the company Gymnastics Mediolanum was established on February 11, 1896; the newspaper reports in this regard: “A new gymnastic society with the name of Mediolanum has been set up in Milan, chaired and instructed by the well-known gymnast rag. Alberto Alberti ".
Another irrefutable and sufficiently extensive testimony comes from "Il Corriere della Sera" published on 23-24 March 1896. The most widespread citizen sheet contains these useful information: "The Mediolanum Gymnastics Society, on the initiative of its President Mr. Alberto Alberti, will open a section of outdoor gymnastic games in early April. The playground, which will be one of the first to arise in Italy and which will be located in one of the vast courtyards of the Castle, kindly granted by the Town Hall, can only do honor to the city of Milan ".
These two excerpts of the article undoubtedly testify to the importance of the Mediolanum Society as a precursor of football and sport in Italy. Alberto Alberti's company was the first to “promote the opening of public squares for physical exercises and games”, anticipating the reform and innovative project of the National Central Committee for Physical Education and Gymnastic Games in Schools and in the People.
THE BIRTH OF FOOTBALL
"La Gazzetta dello Sport" communicated on 26 March 1897: "The local association which was called the Mediolanum Gymnastics Society will henceforth be called the Mediolanum Physical Education Society".
The apparent small variant shows that this society does not want to limit its implementation to gymnastic exercises proper, but to extend it to sports games, cycling, mountaineering, etc. etc. , to all those that serve the rational and general development of the human organism.
Now in its first year of life, this choice represents a not inconsiderable distinctive element, a broadening of horizons that underlies modernity and openness to the new. A technical "revolution" that saw it as a forerunner in Italy in promoting a hygienic and educational vision, albeit only militaristic and with a Jahnian approach, of physical exercise. It is therefore not surprising that Mediolanum was one of the first in Milan to experience the sport that more than any other embodied the bourgeois spirit, the sporting mentality of the newly emerging strata.
The game in question is FOOTBALL, once the initial mistrust has been overcome, it would have quickly conquered the fan and playful passion of the great mass of Italians. Once again Mediolanum demonstrates that ability to be ahead of the times that few other sports associations can boast ... and of which we are proud!
THE HUNDRED YEARS OF SEF MEDIOLANUM
Eighty years after the first steps taken at the Castello Sforzesco, the historical time that opens from here on, up to the fateful date of 1996, has meant for SEF "Mediolanum" having to confront / clash with the impetuous transformations induced in the sports system Italian, from the eruption of multiple factors, internal and external, bureaucratic-administrative and socio-cultural, which have profoundly conditioned and altered the scenario. Furthermore, the plant deficiencies of the Milanese local administration had a heavy impact on the association's development potential: the never-ending story of the Piazzale Accursio gym. The Piazzale Accursio facility was located in the area of the old National Cagnola Shooting. Built in 1903 by the major of the genius Silvio Gariboldi, the polygon consisted of a two-storey main building, occupied by the buildings and the management, by a canopy designed to shelter the shooters and the public, a warehouse and later a shed was built used as a gym. The decline of the artistic complex began in 1970, following the decision to transfer shooting in the adjacent Via Achille Papa and already in 1973 an article was published in the "Gazzetta dello Sport" which entitled: Mediolanum fears to receive eviction ".
Hence all the hardships that hit the Company, which from that moment undertook its courageous, inexhaustible legal dispute. As expected the repeated evictions announced hit the gym. Until the last, executive, of May 30, 1995. With a resolution of June 6, 1995, the "Mediolanum" was finally assigned a seat: the school gymnasium in via Silla n ° 150 in Figino, of which it took full possession the following July 8. Therefore a "Darwinian" struggle for sports survival that the Company has been able to fight with will and firmness. A test of strength and stubbornness.
From Castello Sforzesco to Figino: from the center of Milan to its extreme limits. A little bad. In its ancient and prestigious name, in figures of gentlemen such as Alberto Alberti and Olindo Guerrini, the sign of a never decayed nobility is preserved and perpetuated.
THE FOUNDER: ALBERTO ALBERTI
Who? Which protagonists in the flesh should be placed at the origins of society? It is the complex problem of reconstructing a genealogical tree of the secular association. Unfortunately, first-hand documentation is uncertain to resolve these questions: the Articles of Association and the Constitutive Act. In their stead, the publication, edited by Olindo Guerrini, “Society for Physical Education Mediolanum 1896-1976” always applies. The agile brochure highlights the charismatic role played by Cav. Alberto Alberti, corporate president from '96 to 1920. And the figure of Alberti needs some quick biographical notes that illuminate his long militia and exceptional dynamism. As an athlete he brought back the Bronze Medal at the Milan Competition (1876); Silver in those of Turin (1877) and Milan (1890); Gold in those of Varese (1886), Pallanza (1886), Rome (1895). At the rings he won in Milan, Lodi, Arona and Locarno. Fortunato Ballerini, speaking of the competition that was held in Rome in 1889, defined him as "the most enthusiastic of Italian gymnasts"; and in 1885, in Vercelli, he had earned these praises: "The Alberti of Milan ... showed once again how he does not need to have the greatness of the giant Goliath or the shoulders of Hercules to possess an uncommon strength, and the audience understood this, who continued thunderous clapping applauded his strength exercises, performed with an ease and elegance that form one of Alberti's main qualities ”.
As teachers of physical education, albeit with a degree in accountancy, Alberto Alberti carried out teaching activities in the "Cesare Correnti" Royal School which in 1910, in Rome, led to success in the National Gymnastics School Competition, at the institute for the blind, at the regio of the muti, in the “Bianchi-Morand” Women's College, in the Guastalla Royal Women's College. An educational career as a "missionary" of gymnastics with multiple studies to his credit, including the appreciated "Vademecum for gymnastics teacher in elementary schools". Then in 1896, having obtained a prestigious seat in the Castello Sforzesco, as a former "pro-patrino" he started the Mediolanum which adopted the classic Biscione Meneghino as its emblem.
