ROME – Rome is mourning the disappearances of Piero Gratton , "dad" of the yellow and red wolf, and Marco Scisciola , former coach of the youth capitoline.
Roma remembered their old coach Marco Scisciola with the following post posted on Twitter:
“ #ASRoma mourns the death of Marco Scisciola, a 10-year-old technician serving the youth sector. Our warmest embrace goes to the family members ”.
Piero Gratton is dead, Roma remembers him on his website.
“For the Giallorossi fans he is the man from Lupetto and Pouchain. A symbol and a jersey in the heart of all Romanists.
But the human and professional history of Piero Gratton goes far beyond these brilliant intuitions, as well as the eternal legacy left to Rome.
Born in Milan in 1939, Gratton has not only delivered a style to Rome, he has made it an integral part of the identity of the team and its city.
Just in Rome he began to make himself known and appreciated by working in Rai as an animating graphic designer, a task that exalts his skills as an artist and craftsman of the image and creativity, so much so that in 1961 a newspaper dedicated a full page to him defining him “The little Walt Disney of TV ".
In over twenty years he designs, creates and invents for an endless series of Rai productions, working closely, among others, with Piero Angela (his brotherly friend), Enzo Biagi, Andrea Barbato.
He takes care of everything from the animations for the live broadcast of July 1969 dedicated to the landing of Apollo 11 on the Moon to children's broadcasts, from scientific sections to the creation of the image – very Romanist – of Tg2, up to the theme song 'Dribbling' , created by drawing directly on the film with a nib soaked in acid.
In between, sport and especially Rome. He met the manager Gilberto Viti on the occasion of his first job in sport: the European Athletics Championships in 1974, of which he takes care of the image.
It is he who designs the season tickets from the 1974/75 season, the season in which he creates the company logo with "as" in yellow and red and "roma" in black.
It is the beginning of a path that will lead him to build a completely new visual identity.
For the Society of the President, Anzalone designs practically everything: brands, posters, uniforms, suits, tickets, passes and commercial products.
The culmination of his work came in 1978. On 19 July the Company presented the new brands: a black "R" with a yellow and red profile and above all the stylized Lupetto.
The initiative raises some criticisms, in response to which the Company has an article signed "Il Lupacchiotto" published on the Messenger (Rome itself was initially skeptical about the nickname "Lupetto"), which will prove prophetic:
"So I was born, legitimate scion of the purest lupine lineage (…). I guarantee you that my heart has nothing to envy to that, legendary, of my mother, is only younger. Give me time and I'll try it. "
It will be exactly like this, in a short time all the fans will become attached to the turtleneck, like the new shirts designed by Gratton and produced by Pouchain in the framework of an operation that will make the Giallorossi Club the forerunner of sports marketing in Italy.
Roma wore them for the first time on 17 December 1978 and beat Juventus 1-0 with goals from Agostino Di Bartolomei.
Piero Gratton that day is on the sidelines and enjoys the success of his new creature, renamed by the "popsicle" fans because the alternation of colors reminded of an ice cream in vogue at the time.
In Gratton's endless curriculum there are also the graphics of two Champions Cup finals, played in Rome in 1977 and 1984, the visual identity of UEFA and the Europeans of 1980 and 1984, national, European and world championships of numerous disciplines up to the graphic design of "Granfinale", Bruno Conti's farewell game to football in 1991.
His name, in the imagination of Roman fans, has always remained tied to the mock neck and the shirts used between 1978 and the early 1980s.
And precisely in the path that these two inventions have made in Romanist culture we see the greatness of those who created them:
both the turtleneck and those jerseys have in fact first represented a factor in breaking tradition, and then, instead, become an evocative element of tradition itself.
"The turtleneck – he said in an interview granted in 2012 to asroma.it – was to be an almost elementary symbol, an imprint born from the need to reproduce the logo anywhere, even on a pencil. It is this simplicity that makes it almost unsinkable, timeless ".
Piero Gratton managed to add something to the identity of the Company, despite having always been very strong, managing to combine sentiment with the commercial needs of the Club.
He created a heritage that has ceased to be his, becoming a common heritage because every fan could live it in his own way:
the children who drew the wolves on school diaries and the adults saw in a new light a Rome that was growing up, today they go hunting for reproductions of the Pouchain shirts.
Of the drawings of Piero Gratton. A person, in fact, with professional qualities and above-average human sensitivity, who will always have a special place in Roman history and culture.
“At Prima Porta cemetery there is a sector where children are buried. There – said Gratton in the interview with asroma.it -, parents bring their children's toys to this lawn.
You cannot imagine how many little flags with the little wolf are there, believe me it is a moving thing that made a great impression on me.
I could never have imagined how such a simple symbol could have affected the imagination of so many little children ".
Born from his fantasy, the mock turtle will always remain alive in the fantasy of every little or big Roma fan. Together with its creator ".
Source: Blitz Quotidiano