«I really love football» History of the first experimental female football team in Italy (Milan, 1933)

Abstract

This essay is the first attempt to study an unique case in the History of Italian Sports: the first experimental women football team (Spring-Fall 1933). Some football fans set up a team called “Gruppo Femminile Calcistico” (GFM), and they obtained a temporary permission from the Fascist sport authorities, as long as GFM shouldn’t play public matches. Yet the team was so successful that the GFM started to play public matches: that’s how their adventure ended. The essay analyses all the articles, comic strips and photos published during that year (1933) by Il Calcio Illustrato, a Milanese sport magazine. The main aim is to investigate the GFM’s rhetoric, focusing on keywords and linguistic expressions: the women tried to introduce their activity as an admissible, and even ideal activity for the Fascist audience. At the end of the essay there’s an analysis of the dialogue between the women and a male reporter of Il Calcio Illustrato, who wrote a reportage about GFM.