Pisa SCPisa Sporting Club was founded in 1909 in Pisa, in the heart of Tuscany, and has played in black and blue from the outset, which gave rise to the nickname “I Nerazzurri”. Only eleven years after its formation the club reached the final of the 1921 Italian championship, in which it lost to Pro Vercelli. That runners-up place from the early days of Italian football remains one of the oldest memories in the club’s chronicle, but afterwards Pisa spent decades looking for its place in the hierarchy. It spent many years in Serie B and Serie C, and played mainly in the third tier in the 1970s.
The club’s story is hard to tell without one figure. In 1978 Romeo Anconetani, a charismatic and superstitious official born in Trieste in 1922, became president and ran the club until its bankruptcy in 1994. Anconetani was famous for throwing salt onto the pitch to bring the team luck. During his sixteen years in charge he got through 22 coaches, which earned him the nickname “mangia-allenatori”, the coach-eater. His reign coincided with the best period in the club’s history: Pisa returned to Serie B in 1979 and won promotion to Serie A in 1982, spending six of the following nine seasons there.
The 1980s brought the greatest successes. Pisa won Serie B in 1985 and 1987, and in Europe they won the Mitropa Cup, the old Central European competition. They took it twice, in 1986 and 1988, beating Hungarian opposition in both finals. In 1991 the club reached another final in the competition but lost. In 1987/88 the Brazilian Dunga, later captain of the Brazil side that won the 1994 World Cup, played for Pisa, for whom it was his first stop in Europe. After 1990/91 the club was relegated from Serie A.
The years that followed were full of uncertainty. After the 1994 bankruptcy the club was reborn as Pisa Calcio and began in Eccellenza, the sixth tier of Italian football. In 2008 it lost a two-legged promotion play-off final to Lecce. A year later it was excluded from competition again because of debts, and in the summer of 2009 it was refounded as AC Pisa 1909. The club returned to Serie B in 2019, and in 2021 it took back the name Pisa Sporting Club. Around the same time Alexander Knaster became its owner.
The club’s present is another chapter in this series of comebacks. In 2025 Pisa were promoted to Serie A for the first time since 1990/91, after 34 years away. They finished the 2025/26 season in last place and were relegated, which only confirmed that their story is a constant swing between the elite and the lower divisions. For supporters it remains a source of pride, since a club that has twice collapsed has always found a way to be reborn. Its local rival is Tuscan neighbour Livorno, a fixture that stirs particular emotions across the region.
The club’s home is the Arena Garibaldi, in the city centre, opened in 1919. Since 2001 it has also carried the name of Romeo Anconetani, in memory of the president who led the club into Serie A. For Pisa’s supporters the stadium is more than a sporting venue: it is the place where old heroes, Anconetani’s salt and European trophies form a single story of a club that always came back.