The Milan Cathedral in Chains: We Are Spartak!
- Alessio Casamassima
- Mar 18
- 3 min read
What do our symbols mean and why do we wear white and blue? Let's discover together the secrets of our uniform and our social colors.
"Who are we? SPARTAK!" Our battle cry that we shout together in a circle before every match, expresses well our desire to let everyone know our name. Unfortunately, however, it has happened to us more than once that a spectator or an opposing player has asked us this question: "Why don't you shout: This is Spartak?". How annoying 😖.
Ok. First of all, let's make it clear that our name has nothing to do with the famous 300 warriors of Leonidas, even if we appreciate their fighting spirit. The name Spartak comes from Spartacus, the rebellious Roman slave who led the slave revolt against Rome in the Third Servile War between 73 and 71 BC.
From Republican Rome to a Bestselling Novel
Over the centuries, the gladiator originally from Thrace and bitter enemy of the Roman Republic became the emblem of the hero capable of fighting titanically in the name of freedom and defeating the greatest armies in the world thanks to ideal impetus rather than the force of arms.
And it is for these reasons that the novelist and Garibaldian Raffaello Giovagnoli published, in 1873, the novel Spartaco as a tribute to Garibaldi's heroism and even featuring a letter from Garibaldi in the preface: the hero of the Two Worlds defines himself as a freedman and ends his work by hoping for a future in which there will be neither gladiators nor masters.
When Spartacus Became Spartak
The novel then became famous especially in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the last century, also because it glorified the virtues of a figure already celebrated by Karl Marx. Spartacus became so popular that in 1935 when the sports club of a Moscow workers' union had to change its name it chose Spartak (Spartacus in Russian). That team was Spartak Moscow, a club that was born totally against the trend of the Soviet clubs of the time, such as those for railway workers, for police departments or those of the army that gave names like Dinamo, Lokomotiv or CSKA. Spartak Moscow was, in fact, the team par excellence of the workers, both male and female.
"Dinamo was the KGB team, CSKA was the army team, Torpedo was the ZIL factory team, Lokomotiv was the railway team, and only Spartak was independent. Supporting Spartak was a way of saying no!" From “Football and Power”, by Simon Kuper
Unihockey under the Madonnina in Milan
Let's get to the present day, to Milan and Unihockey. From the name Spartak to the broken chains the logical step is as short as it is obvious: choosing to play floorball in Italy is freeing oneself from the slavery imposed by the major all-encompassing sports and breaking the conventions dictated by a football-centric society. If we then add the stylised Duomo and a floorball stick, here is our coat of arms. With the Duomo, whose shape also characterises our match uniform, and the tricolour band we wanted to reaffirm our close bond with Milan, the city where we live and where our love for this sport was born.
QT8: The Milanese Neighborhood in the History of Italian Floorball
But what do the white and blue colors have to do with Spartak Moscow or the gladiators of Rome? To solve the mystery we have to go back in time to the early 2000s. Floorball in Italy was just born and until then only Varese and Bolzano played championships and cups. In that period and in the Milan neighborhood from which it takes its name, QT8 Voltures was born, also known as QT8 Milano, but above all "father" of Spartak. After playing several championships, in fact, some members of QT8 decided in 2016 to create a new team, but with the same social colors: white and blue.
Spartak Floorball Milano: Towards the future and beyond
Who knows if the choice of members was dictated by the heart or by the need to save on uniforms. What is important is that Spartak was born and that it plays and wins in Milan and in Italy for its fans and also for the good old QT8.
On YouTube you can find one of the starting lineups of QT8 (now Spartak) link https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=jwxTMAesFd4
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