Spal and fascism: the influence of the regime in the 1920s according to Oscar Ghesini

Spal and fascism: what were the relationships? He studied, wrote and partly told yesterday in the Ariostea Library Oscar Ghesini, presenting the second volume of the saga in four substantial volumes "La Spal from its origins to the post-war period", which deals precisely with the XNUMXs. The regime was very quick to immediately understand the interest that the local football club was increasingly arousing, foreseeing from its early years the propaganda scope of a sport that was already starting to sail towards professionalism, exciting the masses. It happened that a Spal with around 7-800 members and therefore difficult to control, saw the number of registered followers rapidly decrease: the operation was carried out through an increase in entry fees such as to discourage those interested. For a city like Ferrara at that time, those hundreds of members represented a numerically enormous resource, which in a short time began to thin out. The one who pulled the reins, favoring from behind the scenes the progressive "fascistization" of the sports club was the federal of the Ferrara party Umberto Klinger.

Venetian and great friend of Italo Balbo and Vittorio Cini, at a certain point he encountered a huge obstacle in the work: so thin in its financial participation, and struggling with costs that began to grow vertiginously with the advent of professionalism, Spal in 1927 found itself on the verge of bankruptcy after the resignation of the Board of Directors. The bankruptcy of the sports club would have represented a defeat for the fascist regime. Klinger favored the solution to the problem, on the one hand by appointing a Commission in charge for the 1927-28 season composed of managers with deep pockets, on the other by obtaining subsidized credit from the banks and a deferral of the expiry of the current mortgages. A further panacea came from the affirmation of Abdon Sgarbi from Bondeno, bought for a few lire by Portuense and sold at a very high price (40 thousand lire!) to Milan. There was also a lack of intervention on the "defeatist" journalists. With the proceeds of the sale, and with a cost cut that led to the dismissal of the Austrian coach Walter Alt, it was possible to pay off the debts and start from scratch. The affair strengthened the ties between the two clubs, to the point that on 4 April 1929 Klinger was able to present the new headquarters of Spal at the Caffè Nazionale in the presence of the entire Milan team, who in the afternoon won 5-1 in the friendly match agreed for the occasion. Sgarbi and Milan were not lucky: a few months later the centre-half died of typhoid and the Rossoneri lost their champion. This and much more is narrated in Ghesini's book, from the laying of the first stone of the new stadium, the current one, in 1925 to the sentencing of president Ridolfi to 7 years for having diverted 38 thousand lire from the club. Flanked by the sports councilor Francesco Carità and the moderator Riccardo Vaccari, Ghesini gathered in Ariostea the descendants of the Spal footballers of the twenties, the various Cerini, Bertacchini, Caniato, Festi, Fini, Preti, Felisi, Ticozzelli and many others, many of whom came from other regions and happy to participate, in person or by connection, in an excellent operation of memory. Today they will be able to visit the "Mazza" guided by the Coordination Center of Valentina Ferozzi.

Mauro Malaguti