Cimiano Calcio S.S.D

From bocce courts to the FIGC register

The club began in 1957, when Battista Alberini, Camillo Pasta, Gerardo Aventino, Oreste Rescalli and Carlo Filisetti set up the Polisportiva Cimiano in the north-eastern Milan district that gave it its name. Football was not the point at first: the founding sections were tamburello, bocce and basketball, the standard menu of a post-war neighbourhood sports society on the edge of the city.

Football arrived in 1970 and gradually took over. The formal step came in 1981, when the society constituted its first board of directors under president Giuseppe Frigerio and registered with the FIGC — the point at which Cimiano stopped being a local pastime and became a club with a competitive structure, fixtures and a youth intake.

The 1990s turned that structure into real estate. A new statute in 1990 allowed the society to expand, and in 1995 a sports centre of roughly 30,000 square metres opened, later extended by a further 25,000. The complex, C.S. 'Mario Casadei' on Via Don Giovanni Calabria 16, remains the club's only home and the venue for everything it sells tickets to.

The Rossoneri link

The relationship that defines Cimiano was brokered in the 1980s by Luigi 'Gino' Maldera, a former Milan player who joined the club and set up an affiliation with the Rossoneri built around youth development rather than first-team convenience. Francesco Zagatti, another Milan man, worked at Cimiano as a sports educator; a player named Grillo became the first to move from Cimiano to Milan, which is the kind of milestone a feeder club measures itself by. Zagatti's name still attaches to squads on the fixture list — the Under-14 provincial side plays under it.

That affiliation has hardened into a formal role. Cimiano presents itself as a Centro Tecnico Milan and runs Milan Football School programmes, the Milan Junior Camp and the AC Milan School Cup out of Via Calabria, alongside its own scuola calcio and pre-competitive groups. The practical effect is that a child in Cimiano can start in a Milan-badged coaching programme without leaving the neighbourhood.

Recognition arrived in 1999, when the FIGC issued the club a certificate of merit and the provincial authority in Milan awarded it a gold medal — the Isimbardi prize — specifically for the youth work rather than for results.

Christmas Eve 2005, and who owns the place now

The club's worst moment was a fire on Christmas Eve 2005 that destroyed much of the sports centre. The board chose to rebuild rather than fold, which is the decision the current operation rests on; without it there would be no pitches to run a tournament on.

The second turning point was commercial. In 2018 Sportland, a company active in amateur and youth football across Milan, took the club over, with Federico Galli as president, and reinvested in the plant — most visibly in latest-generation artificial turf, which is what allows a January-to-April tournament to be played in Lombardy at all. The centre now also sells pitch and padel bookings by phone alongside its club activity, and the club office keeps deliberately amateur hours, Monday to Friday between 18.00 and 20.00.

Sponsorship reflects the same shift from parish society to run business: Puma as technical supplier, and partnerships announced in early 2022 with the Norwegian security firm Sector Alarm, on 16 March, and the Milan-area energy company Miogas, on 17 January.

The work that matters: the Trofeo Italo Galbiati

Cimiano's reputation outside its own postcode now rests on a tournament it organises rather than on a team it fields. The Trofeo Italo Galbiati commemorates Italo Galbiati, Fabio Capello's long-serving assistant across Milan, Rome, Turin, Madrid, London and Moscow, and it is run with the Galbiati family and an organising committee.

The second edition, announced by the club on 4 February 2025, drew 16 amateur and 10 professional sides and ran through to April. The third edition, played between 6 January and 15 April 2026, grew to 28 teams — 16 amateur clubs and 12 professional ones, with Milan, Inter, Atalanta and Como as top seeds and Cremonese and Monza also entered — at the 2010 age group. Individual awards were handed out from the quarter-finals onwards, referees for the closing rounds came from Eccellenza and Serie A lists, and the awards evening was staged at the Auditorium BPM in Milan.

The 2026 final, on the Via Calabria pitches, was the club's best advertisement. Pergolettese's Under-16s and Inter played out 0-0 over 100 minutes before Pergolettese won 4-2 on penalties, goalkeeper Berti saving from Serrantoni and Penta and Alessandro Scolamacchia chipping in the winning kick; Serie A official Kevin Bonacina refereed. Pergolettese, coached by Todisco, had beaten Pro Sesto, Albinoleffe, Como and Renate to get there, and became the first Serie C club to take the trophy, after Monza and Como won the first two editions. Inter took three of the individual prizes — Samuele Spanò as best goalkeeper, Noah Forlani as man of the match — with Giacomo Bresciani of Virtus Ciserano Bergamo named best amateur player.

The same organising machinery supports other fixtures on the site: the Milano Winter Cup, run with IFE Sportland, put its 2025 edition across the Cimiano centre and the Pero Sporting Club on 3-5 January.

Where it stands in September 2026

The club's public calendar for 2026 has been about intake rather than silverware. The Cimiano Summer Camp, announced on 27 March, ran for five weeks from 8 June to 10 July 2026, following a six-week 2025 edition open to children born between 2012 and 2019. Recruitment open days for the new season were published on 1 June 2026, pitched around the pre-competitive groups and the scuola calcio.

On the competitive side, the traffic is youth football, and it is ticketed. Seven dates are listed for the 2026-27 season through the club's Ticketmaster page, and the ones already on sale are pre-season friendlies at the Casadei centre: a general 'Amichevoli Cimiano' date on 5 September 2026, then the Under-14 provincial side against Sesto 2012 on 9 September and against Rondinella on 13 September. Earlier listings show the same pattern across the whole pyramid the club operates — pre-competitive Under-9, Under-12 and Under-13 fixtures, an Under-12 spring tournament, an Under-17 Regionale Elite match against Schuster on 26 February 2025 and an Under-21 game on 1 February 2025.

A matchday on Via Calabria

Nothing about attending a Cimiano fixture is staged. The venue is a synthetic-pitch complex behind housing in north-east Milan, a short walk from the Cimiano metro stop; a ticket buys admission to a fenced pitch with changing rooms, and the fixture is named on the listing by age group and opponent rather than by any competition branding. There are no support acts and no interval: the entertainment is a youth match, and on most dates it is over inside a couple of hours.

The exception is the Galbiati, when the same pitches host professional academies and a Serie A referee, and when the tie can run past 100 minutes into penalties as it did in April 2026. The regional press covered that final as a Serie C club breaking into territory normally shared out between Milan, Inter and Atalanta — which is a fair description of what the tournament exists to do.