Pro Sesto 1913

A works town club, 1913 to the Serie B years

Pro Sesto was founded in 1913 as the Società Ginnico Sportiva Pro Sesto, in a town on the northern edge of Milan then filling with steelworks and the Breda engineering plant. The club affiliated to the Italian federation in 1914 and played its first official match on 17 January 1915. The white shirt with a sky-blue band across the chest dates from those years, and money was short enough that players sewed the band onto plain white shirts themselves.

The first stoppage came almost immediately. Activity ceased during the First World War, resumed in 1919/20, then ended again when the club folded after the 1921/22 season for lack of funds. A second version appeared in 1927 as Unione Sportiva Pro Sesto and lasted barely a year before the Fascist regime pushed it into a merger with Gruppo Sportivo Breda, the works side of the factory that gave the ground its name.

Reformed after the Second World War out of merged local clubs, Pro Sesto reached its highest level: four consecutive seasons in Serie B in the late 1940s, the best of them a seventh-place finish in 1948/49. Decline followed, then a merger with AC Sestese in 1963 and decades spent between the amateur leagues and the lower professional divisions. The youth section's best-known graduates are the publisher Urbano Cairo and the Formula One driver Ivan Capelli.

Bankruptcy, refoundation, and a London fund

In 2010 the old A.C. Pro Sesto went bankrupt and the federation revoked its affiliation. A new entity, Associazione Sportiva Dilettantistica Nuova Pro Sesto, was set up to carry the name forward, and the climb back took a decade: promotion to Serie C arrived in 2020 after the club won its Serie D group.

Four seasons in the third tier followed, and they ended badly. Pro Sesto finished nineteenth in Serie C Group A in 2023/24 and went back down to Serie D. In 2024 the majority shareholding passed from Mauro Ferrero to Professional Football Investments Ltd, a London-registered private investment vehicle, which installed the Swedish financier Niklas Amundsson as president. Lorenzo Pellegrino holds the honorary presidency.

That is the structure the club now runs on: foreign ownership, a modest professional-scale budget and an amateur league that offers one direct promotion place per group, with the play-offs feeding a national ranking used to fill vacancies in the professional divisions. It is a thin margin, and it has defined the last two campaigns.

Two seasons of close enough, then a clear-out

The first year back was flat. In 2024/25, placed in Girone B, Pro Sesto finished eighth with 52 points from 38 matches, a record of 13 wins, 13 draws and 12 defeats, 45 scored and 43 conceded. Ospitaletto took the group with 75.

Moved to Girone D for 2025/26, the team improved without threatening the top: sixth with 55 points from 34 matches, 15 wins, 10 draws and nine defeats, 45 goals for and 29 against. The defensive record was among the better ones in the group; the attack was not.

The response was a near-total rebuild over the summer of 2026. Marco Zanardini, previously at Desenzano and Pro Palazzolo and formerly youth director at Brescia, was appointed sporting director on 25 June. Matteo Contini, the former Napoli, Milan, Parma and Real Zaragoza defender with more than 500 senior appearances, was named head coach at the start of July, replacing Daniele Angellotti, who left for Varesina. The captain, Mapelli, went to Pro Patria.

In came the striker Rocco Costantino as the new captain, a player with roughly 240 Serie C appearances and 80 goals behind him, the midfielders Federico Zazzi and David Lordkipanidze, the goalkeeper Matteo Zamarian out of Inter's title-winning Primavera, and the defenders Venturini, Gardoni and Facchini. Meriggi, born in 2008, and the attacking midfielder Clerici stayed. New kits with Zeus Sport were presented on 13 July. The squad reported to the Breda on Tuesday 21 July and went into camp at Selvino from 27 July to 1 August. Contini's early public read on the group was simply that it is a side that plays football.

The Breda, rebuilt over the summer

Stadio Ernesto Breda, built in 1939 and owned by Parco Nord Milano, holds 3,523. It was worked on heavily before this season. The pitch was relaid to a top-flight standard and is good enough to host Inter's women's side in the Champions League. The dressing rooms and benches were redone, a VIP box was added above the main stand, a press room and hospitality space were built, and the internal stairwells and walls were repainted. Along the open terrace, blue seats are set into the stand to spell out Pro Sesto 1913.

The season opened there on Sunday 6 September against Lentigione, with a ceremony before kick-off bringing back players from the club's past. The ground is small, flat and close to the pitch, with one covered stand and open terracing, and it sits inside the park on the site of the old factory district the club came from.

Where they stand, October 2026

Five rounds into 2026/27, Pro Sesto are second in Girone D on 12 points, level with Aurora Pro Patria and three behind Pistoiese, who have won every match.

The form that put them there includes a 3-0 win over Città di Pontedera, reported on 18 September, in which Costantino scored all three, his first goals in the white and blue at the age of 36 and the reason the local press has taken to calling him the emperor. Then came the biggest result of the fifth round, played on Sunday 27 September: 6-1 against Oltrepò at the Breda. Maffioletti scored after eight minutes, Costantino added two, Morello two more, and it was 5-0 at the interval before Viscardi finished the scoring and Oltrepò pulled one back in the second half. Contini's assessment afterwards was that praise was coming too easily that day, and that what counted was the work the players were doing without the ball.

The sixth round takes them away to Arconatese on Sunday 4 October at 15:00, refereed by Jacopo Ricci of Rovereto, with the fixture moved to the municipal ground at Caronno Pertusella. The stated aim for the season is the play-offs, which would be a step up on sixth and eighth.