Deportivo Italia (1948–2010)

Deportivo Italia (1948–2006) is a Venezuelan football team founded in 1948 and disbanded – as a team of the Italian community of Venezuela – in summer 2006. In those 62 years of existence the team has won the Primera División Venezolana five times and the Copa de Venezuela three times. Actually the Deportivo Italia has been substituted (with a change of name strongly disputed) by Deportivo Petare, a team representing a neighbourhood area of Caracas.

The team was founded in August 1948 by a group of Italian immigrants: Carlo Pescifeltri, Lorenzo Tommasi, Bruno Bianchi, Giorgio Valentini, Samuel Rovatti, Angelo Bragaglia, Giovanni di Stefano, Alfredo Giuseppe Pane and Sacchi. Deportivo Italia in the 1960s soon became the most important Venezuelan Football Team, popularly called "Los Azules" (Azzurri) by the color of the team shirt inspired by the Italian national team.

Indeed the arrival in Venezuela of hundreds of thousands of Europeans after the Second World War became a reason, among other things, in creating football teams for the different "colonies" of immigrants. Thus the Italians had their Deportivo Italia (while the Portuguese the "Deportivo Portugues", the Spanish Gallegos the Deportivo Galicia, the Canarian immigrants their "Unión Deportiva Canarias ", etc. ...).

The early years of "Los Azules" were characterized by limited success. But in 1958 began – thanks to the "D'Ambrosio management" – the golden age of the team, which lasted until the late seventies: between 1961 and 1972, every year Deportivo Italia won an award nationally and/or internationally.

In 1958 Mino D'Ambrosio took control of the Deportivo Italia and with his brother Pompeo D'Ambrosio (who financially controlled the team) the "Azzurri" reached the highest honors in football in Venezuela. The "D'Ambrosio Golden Era" lasted until 1978 and was characterized by four national titles and the famous Little Maracanazo in 1971. Also won three times the Copa Venezuela: in 1961, 1962 and 1970 (and was second in 1976).

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