History of AS Roma
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The history of Associazione Sportiva Roma begins with its founding on 7 June 1927 by Italo Foschi,[1] who initiated the merger of three older Italian Football Championship clubs from the city of Rome; Roman, Alba-Audace and Fortitudo.[1] Italo Foschi was a Roman representative of the National Fascist Party and the Secretary of the Roman Fascist Federation.[2][3]
The purpose of the merger was to give the Eternal City a strong club to rival that of the more dominant Northern Italian clubs of the time.[1] The only major Roman club to resist the merger was Lazio, which was already a well established sporting society.[4]
The club played its earliest seasons at the Motovelodromo Appio stadium[5] before settling in the working-class streets of Testaccio, where it built the all-wooden ground Campo Testaccio; this was opened in November 1929.[6] An early season in which Roma made a lasting mark on Italian football was in 1930–31, where the club finished as runners-up behind champions Juventus.[7] Captain Attilio Ferraris IV, along with Guido Masetti, Fulvio Bernardini and Rodolfo Volk, were highly important players during this period.[8]