Football Travel: Perugia

The medieval citadel of Perugia provides a stunning backdrop the matches at Stadio Renato Curi. This is the home of AC Perugia, a small club with passionate support and a brilliant museum.

Perugia flies under the radar as a place to visit. This ancient citadel has a real Game of Thrones feel about it, and the views across the Umbrian landscape are absolutely stunning. Perugia is also famous for its chocolate but less so for its football.

The club was founded in 1905 by the merger of two teams but didn’t reach Serie A until 1975. In 1979 they finished runners-up to Milan after going the entire season without a single defeat, the only unbeaten team never to win the title.

The club’s history is brought to life in its brilliant free museum. It contains photos, trophies, shirts and other memorabilia in one small room that enables you to walk through the story of AC Perugia. There are some familiar faces along the way, such as the “White Feather”, Fabrizio Ravanelli, and 1982 World Cup winner, Paolo Rossi.

We bought tickets in the main tribuna from a ticket office in the old city for €29. This seemed quite pricey for a mid-table Serie B clash between Perugia and Cittadella. The visitors had a long journey from the Veneto in the north-east of Italy and I counted 13 away fans with a curva to themselves. Not quite “come in a taxi” but maybe a minibus.

The official attendance was 7,157 for this match – less than a third of the 24,000 capacity stadium was filled – but much of the noise was generated by “Il Grifo” (The Griffin, the club’s logo) fans in their curva behind the goal. The Stadio Renato Curi is named after a club legend who was part of the 1970s golden era, whose moustached image appears in banners and posters around the ground. The ultras were marshalled by at least two capi – a “capo” can often be found in Italian games with his back to play, choreographing the ultras’ songs and chants with a microphone.

Compared to the top-of-the-table clash between Empoli and Palermo that we had enjoyed the night before, the standard was pretty average and wasn’t helped by the state of the pitch. Cittadella were better at putting together the plays around the box when it mattered and ran out 3-1 winners. The referee had dismissed two Perugia players by the final whistle and was greeted with a chorus of boos and jeers as he left the field.

The backdrop was definitely one of the best I have come across groundhopping. The view across Umbria from Perugia’s ancient heart is really quite something.

How to visit AC Perugia

The Stadio Renato Curi is 3kms from the city centre. There is quite a large car park and by public transport it is served by a really cute MiniMetro monorail system.