On 7 September 1893, Genoa Cricket and Athletic Club was founded. It is not difficult to understand what the clearly Anglo-Saxon imprint of the new club was. An English novelty, given that five years earlier the first championship had been played across the Channel (ancestor of today’s Premier League) and there were quite a few British based in Genoa.
Genoa was born in the British consulate in via Palestro 10thanks to the work of Charles Alfred Payton, Baronet of the British Empire and Consul General of Her Majesty Queen Victoria of England. He was not the only Englishman to found it, but a series of people such as Charles De Grave Sells, George Blake and George Fawcus. Obviously like all clubs of the time, Genoa was not merely a football team, but an athletics team, with the intention of promoting all sports, from gymnastics to cycling, while cricket had a predominant role. Genoa would later change its name to Football Club, explaining the direction it had taken.
Genoa is therefore 131 years old today and it is the oldest Italian club in our peninsula. Also managing to win the first Scudetto, in 1898, in what was a four-way tournament with three teams from Turin, obviously played right in the Savoy city in a single day.