Ilva Football Club

«Once upon a time there was a football pitch in the middle of the neighbourhood, one of those suburban pitches that mark your knees for life, the ones with goals made of innocent pipes, nets stolen from fishermen and along the metal fence stretches of unlit butts to keep the fans company. The ones where everyone, or almost everyone, dreamed of becoming a footballer. In that arena for gladiators, there played a team of eleven men, who took to the field without pretense and who did not at all suspect the fate that awaited them. This is the story of an incredible ride, an impossible goal in the last minute and the dream called Ilva Football Club».
In Ilva Football Club the story of Europe’s largest steelworks is intertwined with the legend of a small team born right under the smokestacks of the Ilva, to tell the story of an expendable city, which today is Taranto, but tomorrow could be another city, showing us that what happens there affects us much more than we imagine.

The research
In 2022, a UN report defines Taranto as a sacrifice zone.
Sacrifice zones are those places deemed expendable in the name of progress or the production of consumer goods and “represent the worst imaginable neglect of a state's obligation to respect, protect and realise the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment”. The youngest in particular are vulnerable to the adverse health effects of exposure to pollution and toxic substances that cause more than 1 million premature deaths per year among children under 5.
This is where our research starts.

Direction & dramaturgy
The story of the former Ilva, the city of Taranto and its inhabitants is told by interweaving two narrative tracks that turn out to be connected. The narration is led by a sports programme presenter who, breaking down the fourth wall, through anecdotes and commentaries, tells the story of the fictitious Sidercalcio, alias Ilva Football Club: a small team made up of workers who, partly by luck, partly by talent and tenacity, surprise the whole country by making their way among the biggest professional teams, until they reach the Italian Cup final. A dream that slowly collides with reality, crumbles, bringing us into the drama of the second narrative track. Interwoven with the football narrative are monologues and choral moments that make up another, more intimate story, the story of “an Ilva” family born and raised at the foot of the monster, one of the many affected by the monster. This story encompasses the lives of many families in Taranto and at the same time the lives of many families in other expendable cities, cities that have existed or perhaps will exist 100 years from now. Cities with other monsters, producers of other things and generators of other evils that will allow us to continue consuming beyond our limits. The two narrative planes finally rejoin to reveal the true interlocutor of the football narrative and the true nature of the Ilva Football Club legend: this will turn out to be an invention, a pantomime staged in a hospital room, a bedtime story to be told to a child, who has closed his eyes and does not know if he will open them again.