Blue team (bridge)

The Blue Team (Italian: "Squadra azzurra") represented Italy in international contract bridge tournaments, winning sixteen world titles from 1957 through 1975. From 1964 to 1969 and during a 1972 comeback, the team comprised three regular pairs: Walter Avarelli–Giorgio Belladonna, Pietro Forquet–Benito Garozzo, and Massimo D'Alelio–Camillo Pabis Ticci. Eugenio Chiaradia and Guglielmo Siniscalco played in early years; Dano De Falco, Arturo Franco, and Vito Pittalà in late years. The spiritual father, long-time coach, and non-playing captain through 1966 was Carl'Alberto Perroux.

In 1951 Italy won its first European championship (Open teams) and lost to the United States for the second Bermuda Bowl, on home ground in Naples. Chiaradia, Forquet, and Siniscalco were members of that six-man team.

Soon afterward Captain Perroux undertook long-term preparations to win those events, the only major international championships at the time. United States teams were considered the best in the world after the war, and they won two more Bermuda Bowls for North America against Europe. Great Britain, France, and Sweden were also strong, and Europe won the fifth and sixth tournaments with six-man teams from Great Britain and France before Italy won again at the European level.

The breakthrough came in 1956/1957, when the Blue Team defeated Bermuda Bowl champion France in Stockholm and beat a United States team on its home ground, winning the Bermuda Bowl in New York City. The players were now Walter Avarelli, Giorgio Belladonna, Eugenio Chiaradia, Massimo d'Alelio, Pietro Forquet, and Guglielmo Siniscalco. With remarkably stable personnel, the reign of the Blue Team continued until retirement in 1969, broken only by a fifth-place finish in the inaugural, 1960 World Team Olympiad. Twelve world team championships in thirteen years.

A large part of the Blue Team's success lay in new and inventive bidding systems, which were often deemed quite strange, especially by conservative US circles. Losing teams sometimes even complained that the Italians had an unfair advantage using bids that were partly incomprehensible to Americans. Belladonna of Rome and his partners played Roman Club, a "short club" system. Neapolitans Chiaradia and Forquet played Neapolitan Club, a strong club system attributed to Professor Chiaradia and developed with Forquet. Both systems featured canapé-style openings, and often light opening bids and interventions. When young, inventive and cocky Garozzo joined the team in 1960, he further developed with Forquet the Neapolitan system into the Blue Club, which gained worldwide popularity in later years.

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