RIETI – Penultimate stage of the celebratory exhibition ‘Lazio Meravigliosa’, which with photos and memorabilia of the time, recounts the exploits of the first championship of the Biancoceleste club 50 years after that 12 May 1974 which has now entered the history of Italian football.
The event, which will last in the city until 6pm on Sunday 5 May and will end next weekend in Rome coinciding with the anniversary, was inaugurated by the municipal council chaired by the president Claudio Valentini, the deputy mayor Chiara Mestichelli and the councilors Fabio Nobili and Giovanni Rositani, with the mayor Daniele Sinibaldi in the role of ‘interested spectator’ as he is of Lazio faith like his council colleagues.
Valentini and the others hosted the eagle Olimpia and his falconer Juan Bernabè – who attracted the attention of adults and children – but also Giancarlo Oddi who was a founding pivot of that Lazio title, in addition to Gabriele Pulici, James Wilson and Matteo D’Amico, respectively sons of the goalkeeper, the captain and the playmaker of the time, all three of whom died prematurely in different years. Together with them also the Italian singer-songwriter Toni Malco, composer of the official Lazio anthem ‘Vola Lazio, vola’. At a later time, Domenico Masuzzo, now an adopted Rieti native and close friend of the late Vincenzo D’Amico, who at the time was playing with the Biancoceleste Primavera, as well as with the first team, also joined the ‘veterans’ of that triumph.
There was also Agostino Lattuille, president of the Collectors’ League, as well as collector of uniforms and memorabilia of Lazio and the Italian national team of Lazio players, i.e. the person who organized the ‘Lazio Meravigliosa’ event and who has been going around the five since February provinces of the region to make known a traveling exhibition which contains not only the shirts and memorabilia of that year, but also many other memories, including newspaper clippings, stadium tickets, football pools slips, balls and everything which brings to mind football from another era, now lost in oblivion.
«For us it is an honor and a pleasure to be able to host this event – Claudio Valentini specified in his introductory speech – because Lazio and Laziality also belong to this territory. Remembering those years is important because if it is true that one cannot live on memories alone, it should not be forgotten that history is the basis on which the present and future are based.”
Some anecdotes from the time remembered by Giancarlo Oddi, then the city councilors honored the guests with a pennant depicting the symbol of the Municipality of Rieti, while Toni Malco complimented the Teatro Flavio Vespasiano “in the hope of being able to propose my show in the summer , given the beauty and majesty of the structure”.
Once the intervention in the council room of the Municipality of Rieti was concluded, the event moved to the nearby Palazzo Dosi, which as mentioned will host the exhibition until Sunday 5 May: in the courtyard the shirts of the teams that faced Lazio that year of Tommaso Maestrelli and Giorgio Chinaglia, then the long, well-organised queue, to grab a photo shot with Olimpia and Juan Bernabè, who «I have good memories of Rieti, both of when we came on retreat years ago, and of when with Olimpia at the stadium we celebrated the Italian Cup on 26 May 2013 with the Lazio fans of this city.”
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