Benevento CalcioIn the 95th minute of the match against AC Milan on 3 December 2017, goalkeeper Alberto Brignoli ran into the opposing penalty area and headed the ball past Gianluigi Donnarumma, earning Benevento a 2–2 draw. The team, which had begun its first Serie A season with fourteen consecutive defeats, thereby won the first point in its history at the highest level. Brignoli became the first goalkeeper to score in Serie A since 2001. It was also the managerial debut of Gennaro Gattuso on the Milan bench, and the match remains one of the most extraordinary evenings in the club's history.
The history of Benevento Calcio began in 1929, but for almost a century the club lived far from the biggest stadiums. The first team, Società Sportiva Littorio Benevento, played at the Santa Maria degli Angeli ground, later renamed after a local lawyer, Gennaro Meomartini. Later incarnations of the club spent decades in the lower divisions, with the choice of stadium really the only constant. After a bankruptcy the club was re-founded in 2005 as Benevento Calcio.
The breakthrough is owed to the brothers Ciro and Oreste Vigorito, who took over the club and invested in it. Ciro Vigorito died in 2010, and the stadium, opened in 1979 as Santa Colomba, was renamed in his honour. Oreste Vigorito stayed with the project, and in 2015–16 the club won Group C of Lega Pro and reached Serie B for the first time in the modern era. In its debut season it finished fifth and won promotion to Serie A through the play-offs, beating Carpi 1–0 on aggregate in the final.
The decisive goal came in June 2017 at the Stadio Ciro Vigorito, filled by more than fourteen thousand supporters, and the scorer was a young Romanian striker, George Pușcaș. Promotion to the elite after just one season in Serie B was an unprecedented event for the city in Campania. The first Serie A season, however, ended with a record start: fourteen consecutive defeats is the worst start in Europe's five biggest leagues. The team finished 20th with 21 points and were relegated.
The club did not collapse. After two seasons in Serie B, in 2019–20 under Filippo Inzaghi it won the competition and returned to the elite with 86 points. In 2020–21 Benevento finished 18th in Serie A with 33 points, which meant relegation again, and in the following Serie B season it finished seventh. In 2023 the team finished 20th in Serie B and dropped to Serie C. That changeable fortune well reflects the situation of a club from a city that until 2017 had no experience of the highest level of the game.
The team plays in yellow and red, and its nicknames are Gli Stregoni (the Sorcerers), Le Streghe (the Witches), I Giallorossi and I Sanniti. The reference to witches belongs to the city's local tradition. The main rivals are Avellino, Casertana and Juve Stabia. The club has not played in Europe, and its greatest achievements remain two spells in Serie A and the legendary draw with Milan. Benevento Calcio remains a club that proved that a team from provincial Campania can break through to the top league, and its history, full of rebirths and surprising moments, is an important chapter of modern Italian football.