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During their long history, Genoa have won the Italian Football Championship nine times. Genoa's first title came at the inaugural championship in 1898 and their last was in 1923-24. They also won the Coppa Italia once. Historically, Genoa is the fourth most successful Italian club in terms of championships won. This slew of early successes lies probably at the origin of the love professed for the team by the godfather of Italian sports journalists Gianni Brera (born in 1919), who, despite having been born nowhere near Genoa always declared himself a supporter of the team; probably out of fascination and respect for its status as pioneer club in the early days of Italian football. The linguistically-gifted journalist went as far as creating one of his peculiar and caustic nicknames for "his" team, dubbing it Vecchio Balordo (Old Fool or Cranky Old One) probably in amicable mocking of its post-war misfortunes (which never really ended until well past Brera's passing). The club has played its home games at the 36,536 capacity Stadio Luigi Ferraris since 1911. Since 1946, the ground has been shared with local rivals Sampdoria. Genoa has spent most of its post-war history going up and down between Serie A and Serie B, with also a brief spell in Serie C. After a long story of bad management and an alleged corruption-related scandal, Genoa is now back playing in Serie A, securing a UEFA Europa League placement at the end of the 2008-09 season. |
