Marco Impiglia

The research papers dealing with the starting of football in Italy at the turn of the XIX century indicate three main lines of ethnical and geographical impulse: 1) the British one with regard to seaports and the big industrial towns of Turin, Milan and Genoa; 2) the Swiss one with regard to many northern towns; 3) the Austrian and German line concerning the territories of the northeastern borders. To these three lines we have to add a forth one, relating to the national gym movement. It was the most important of the lot, if we consider the process of codification of the game. Gym teachers wrote down the first technical manuals, translating into Italian the English regulations. Such texts were the only published for a long time, at least till the end of the I World War. In the following some arguments are to be given in order to illustrate these original textbooks, with special reference to the first one, published in 1895 1. Generally speaking, the Italian Gymnastic Federation tried to insert football in a " citizen-soldier building " project; so that it left football a marginal space, charging it of ideological and martial duties. On the other side, football used the well structured and numerous gym associations to expand itself and, in a second time, claim a whole technical and ruling independence.