La Vecchia Signora (The Old Lady)
Founded: 1897, Stadium: Juventus Stadium, Capacity: 41,507
Juventus FC was founded in 1897 by a group of Torinese students. The club initially wore a pink strip, but in 1903 they were given a set of black and white striped shirts that came from the English team Notts County. Founded with the name of Sport-Club Juventus, initially as an athletics club it is the second oldest of its kind still active in the country after Genoa’s football section (1893) and has competed every season of the premier club division since its debut in 1900 with the exception of the 2006-07 season, being managed by the industrial Agnelli family (owners of the FIAT automobile factory, which has its head office in Turin) almost continuously since 1923. The story goes that the idea to buy the club came to Edoardo Agnelli (president of Juventus from 1923 to 1935) when a Juventus player who was also a FIAT worker was having some difficulties balancing sport and work. The first club to pay a wage and provide a car, Juventus attracted the best players beginning in the 1930s, an era of domination. By building a strong link between the club and the factory workers, who often came from poor parts of Italy, the Agnellis made Juventus the most supported in Italy. Almost one in three Italians are fan of Juventus. They have also one of the largest fanbases worldwide with 170 million supporters across the world. It makes Juventus a symbol of anticampanilismo (“anti-parochialism”) and Italianità (“Italianness”). The club maintains two strong rivalries. One is local, against FC Torino (founded by a former president of Juventus). Matches between the two sides are known as the “Derby della Mole” (Turin Derby). The rivalry dates back to 1906 as Torino was founded by break-away Juventus players and staff. The other is national against Inter Milan in the “Derby d’Italia”. Despite being involved in various scandals, Juventus have always managed to work their way back to the top. Juventus’ official emblem has undergone different and small modifications since the 1920s. The previous modification of the Juventus badge took place in 2004, when the emblem of the team changed to a black-and-white oval shield of a type used by Italian ecclesiastics. It is divided in five vertical stripes: two white stripes and three black stripes, inside which are the following elements, while in its upper section the name of the society superimposed on a white convex section, over golden curvature (gold for honour). The white silhouette of a charging bull is in the lower section of the oval shield, superimposed on a black old French shield and the charging bull is a symbol of the comune of Turin. There is also a black silhouette of a mural crown above the black spherical triangle’s base. This is a reminiscence to Augusta Tourinorum, the old city of the Roman era which the present capital of Piedmont region is its cultural heiress. In January 2017, president Andrea Agnelli announced the change to the Juventus badge for a logotype. More specifically, it is a pictogram composed by a stylized Black and White “J” which Agnelli said reflects “the Juventus way of living. Juventus was the first team in sports history to adopt a star as a symbol associated with any competition’s triumph, who added one above their badge in 1958 to represent their tenth Italian Football Championship and Serie A title, and has since become popularized with other clubs as well. In the past, the convex section of the emblem had a blue colour (another symbol of Turin) and it was concave in shape. The old French shield and the mural crown, also in the lower section of the emblem, had a considerably greater size. The two “Golden Stars for Sport Excellence” were located above the convex and concave section of Juventus’ emblem. During the 1980s, the club emblem was the blurred silhouette of a zebra, alongside the two golden stars with the club’s name forming an arc above.
