Sergio Carpanesi

Sergio Carpanesi was an Italian football midfielder and coach whose playing career spanned thirteen Serie A seasons and whose later life as a manager became inseparable from Spezia, the club of his hometown. He died in Florence on 21 September 2026 at the age of 90. Italian newspapers and Spezia Calcio remembered him as the last surviving member of Fiorentina's first Serie A championship side of 1955-56 and as the coach who twice rescued the Aquilotti in lower-league crises.

He was born in La Spezia on 22 March 1936. As a teenager he played for a local youth side nicknamed the Carpanesi Boys before Fulvio Bernardini signed him for Fiorentina for 400,000 lire when he was still seventeen. Carpanesi made his Serie A debut on 13 May 1956 at Ferrara against SPAL, scoring the winning goal from a Julinho assist. That same season Fiorentina won its first Scudetto under Bernardini; Carpanesi was twenty. He stayed four seasons with the Viola (31 league appearances, one goal) and was later inducted into the ACF Fiorentina Hall of Fame (2022).

After Fiorentina he played for Palermo, SPAL, Roma and Sampdoria, then finished his playing days with Anconitana and Angelana. Across Serie A he made 276 appearances and scored eight goals. With Roma he won the 1960-61 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup and the 1963-64 Coppa Italia. Contemporaries described him as a hard-nosed defensive midfielder with high temperament, equally at home breaking up play and organizing teammates.

As a coach he worked at Maceratese, Lecco, Pisa, Monza and Prato, where he won the Serie C2 title in 1982-83. Spezia then became the defining chapter. Between 1985 and 1990, and again from 1995 to 1997, he managed seven seasons at the Picco. In 1985-86 he led a side of unpaid, out-of-contract players to promotion to Serie C1. Spezia later qualified for the elite Coppa Italia in consecutive seasons, facing Trapattoni's Inter and Maradona's Napoli. In 1989 the club came within half an hour of promotion to Serie B before a late collapse at Lucca. Recalled in 1995 with Spezia facing relegation to Serie C2, he steered the side through the playoffs to survival. Spezia observed a minute's silence before its match against Vis Pesaro after his death, linking the tribute with the mourning for Sandro Mazzola.

Carpanesi lived for many years in Florence, where his funeral was set for 23 September 2026 at the Salesiani church in via Gioberti. Club histories and local papers remembered a meticulous coach who catalogued opponents and players across Italian football, and a Spezia native who never stopped talking about the packed Picco of the late 1980s.