It has not yet been a year and a half since Daniele De Rossi bought Ostiamare, the team where he started playing football. Yet the Lido club has already achieved direct promotion from Serie D, which will allow it to return to professional football 35 years after its last appearance (Serie C2 1990/91). For the first time in its history, moreover, the biancoviola club will participate in the third division of the Italian football pyramid. The beauty of it is that De Rossi had not promised this. Or rather: he had promised results of a different nature. Almost social, one might say: “Our goal in Ostia,” said the current coach of Genoa several times, “is to build a team that is the pride of the region, with a sports center of superior category and a football school that is a reference point for the area. Young people are the oxygen of football: in the long term, we aim for a youth academy that provides talent to the first team. And thus become a technical support for Roma and Lazio as well.”
After the promotion, which came after a long struggle with Ancona and Teramo, the sole administrator of Ostiamare, Luca Beccaceci, confirmed that the club’s vision is and remains exactly what De Rossi dictated: “When we started this journey,” Beccaceci said toUndici, “we did so starting from a clear vision: to build something that had, above all, a strong social identity, rooted in the territory and in the people. Today we can say that that project has evolved, also enriching itself with a sports dimension of great value, capable of providing ambition and perspective. It is a path made of daily work, courageous choices, and authentic emotions. It is precisely these emotions that will be at the center of Radici, the docu-series that will be released in the coming months and that will tell, step by step, this extraordinary adventure from day one.”
There is also a “media” aspect, therefore, in De Rossi’s project and that of his collaborators. But everything starts from the young people, from the Lido community, from a very strong local identity – which has also been highlighted in the design of the jerseys, which De Rossi himself worked on personally. Not by chance, one might say, even before the promotion to Serie C, the Italian Under 19 title among amateurs had already been achieved. Even the sporting director Adriano D’Astolfo, speaking toUndici, emphasized the importance of creating a context that is educational, before being competitive: “For us,” D’Astolfo said, “talent must be recognized, but above all cultivated every day. We believe in a path that puts the player at the center, accompanying him in technical, mental, and human growth. We want to train aware athletes, ready to face the field but also the challenges off the field, because that is where the solidity of a professional is truly built. Sports results are important, but they are the consequence of deep work on individual development and the culture of sacrifice. This project is an investment in the future of the boys and in the value they can express over time.”
After achieving safety with Genoa, even though the mathematical certainty came alongside the defeat against Como, Daniele De Rossi said he wanted to return to Ostia to celebrate with his boys. And the reason for this desire goes beyond the inevitable joy for the result achieved; it can also be found in the atmosphere that has been created in the city, on the beach, around DDR: “At Roma, I had a lot of pressure. In Ostia, however, I feel the human warmth, I feel at home: it has been like a rebirth. I can breathe, take a little distance. Even today, when I reach the last stretch of road leading to the sea, I transform. In Ostia, we can write a story that will make us proud, with the pride of representing a community and its values both on and off the field.” They have started to do it well, they are doing it well. The promotion to Serie C is just one part, and perhaps not even the most important, of a project that goes beyond. Also because it does one of the most beautiful and most difficult things, together: it looks with great confidence towards the future.
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