Pallacanestro Forlì 2.015 was received in the late morning of March 28th by Mayor Gian Luca Zattini to celebrate the prestigious victory of the Serie A2 Italian Cup. The First Citizen of Forlì awarded Pallacanestro Forlì 2,015 the Seal of Caterina Sforza, the highest civic recognition of representation conferred by the Municipality of Forlì to people/companies/associations who have distinguished themselves for their commitment in favor of the City and who have intercepted the Constitutional values with their behavior. Pallacanestro Forlì 2.015 is the only one to have received this honour, granted personally by the Mayor, in the last two years. President Giancarlo Nicosanti in turn honored the Mayor with the blue number 1 “Zattini” Italian Cup shirt.
To open the ceremony, the Mayor Gian Luca Zattini: “Thanks to the players and staff, who make the City dream. Thanks to the management and thanks to everyone who worked to get to this beautiful moment. We are all aware that Forlì is the City of Basketball. I myself come from Becchi’s generation, which many now forget, but basketball is a symbol of our City and Pallacanestro Forlì 2015 takes the values of our City around Italy. On my part, and on the part of the City, there is a desire to recognize this, to recognize that the Society is disseminating important values such as that of sport and inclusion, the value of those who work to ensure that our community spends hours of joy and aggregation. I thank the President and the members of the Company, who with such strength and courage carry forward this beautiful path. We will soon begin work in your home, in the Sports Hall. We will make it beautiful and we hope this will be auspicious in achieving further successes. Having your beautiful Cup here today in the center of the Council Chamber is for us a sign of strong present and future appreciation of your business. I therefore intend to recognize the President’s affection from the entire City for sporting and non-sporting merits.”
The words of the President Giancarlo Nicosanti: “Thanks for the invitation. Clearly it is an honor for us to be here. It is the first time that a team from Forlì has won a national level event in Serie A2. We have already won the trophy but we were in Serie B. We have clearly made an upgrade compared to the victory in 2016. I also speak on behalf of all the members of the Pallacanestro Forlì 2.015 Foundation, without whom we would not be here building this project which today has brought the team to win the Italian Cup. We were accompanied to Rome by many people from Forlì and we also felt the closeness of the institutions and for us this is important, because ours is a project that lives if the whole community lives together with the project. I have to say, even with some players who are here today, we experienced one of the saddest and most difficult times for our community with the floods in May last year. Together with the institutions, together with the Municipality, together with Mayor Zattini we faced a difficult moment in which as a Foundation we wanted to donate the proceeds of the match to the city in order to be as close as possible to those who suffered greatly at that moment. I also take this opportunity to thank the staff who contributed to the donation. We started in 2015 and every year we made an upgrade and we obtained the results we wanted and this also thanks to the institutions. The players certainly deserve a big round of applause, as do all those who work behind the scenes every Sunday. We are a small community, which works to experience joys like the one we just experienced in Rome and then who knows, in a few days the playoffs will start and I don’t want to say anything else. I hope to have a Sports Hall that is truly full for the playoffs. We are already among the top audiences for attendance in Italy, but we expect that for the playoffs, also given the successes achieved, the arena will be filled even more.”
Coach Antimo Martino: “I too, on behalf of the team, join in the thanks. Being here clearly gives us the awareness of having done something important for the City and we are very proud of this. Now we enjoy the celebrations for the Italian Cup, but clearly as a coach my attention is already on what’s ahead. We have a season to complete and we hope to do the best we can.”
Captain, Daniele Cinciarini: “Thank you all, on behalf of the team I thank you for the invitation. For me this is the second year but in fact it is the third having played here in the past and my task is also to convey to my teammates the passion that the city of Forlì has for basketball. This year too the company did an excellent job setting up a competitive team, starting with the people first. We are very happy to have reached this milestone, which rewards the work done in the first part of the season. At the moment, however, we have not done anything yet. For those who are here and were there last year, we were left with a bit of a bad taste in our mouths about the final. We are a very close-knit group and we know that now comes the most difficult moment. This year we have only one goal…”
