Villa Dalmine

Club Villa Dalmine is an Argentine football club from Campana, Buenos Aires Province. The team currently plays in Primera B Nacional, the second level of the Argentine football league system.

Due to a financial crisis, the club was named "Club Atletico Campana" between 1993 and February 2000, after which it reassumed its original and current name.

History

At the end of the 1950s the "Dalmine SAFTA" factory, sited in the city of Campana, Buenos Aires Province, founded a social club with the purpose to allow its employees to practise sports. The club was named "Villa Dalmine", establishing its first location on Chiclana street of that city.

The color adopted for the club was violet, therefore the club and its fans have been familiarly called "El Viola" (an expression derived from the word "violeta" in Spanish) since then. In 1960 Dalmine joins Liga Campanense de Futbol with a team mostly formed by workers and administrative employees of the company. One year later Villa Dalmine affiliated to Torneo de Aficionados (currently Primera D), becoming champion that same year and subsequently promoting to the upper division, Primera C. The team scored the most goals and received the fewest goals during that season.

That first champion was coached by Jose "Perico" Marante and the most frequent line-up was: Masuelli, Gutierrez, Coronel, Dopazo, Chiarle, Monteiro, Burian, Menendez, Montero, Cesareo, Torello and Moyano. Most of those players were professionals unlike Primera D players, who usually are amateur and they had other jobs to make a living. In 1963, two years after promoting to Primera C, Villa Dalmine won another title, promoting to Primera B Metropolitana. Because two teams had finished the season sharing the first position with 52 points each, a playoff series had to be played in order to determine a champion. The rival was All Boys and Dalmine won the series, after the first game ended 0–0 and the second was won by El Viola 1–0.

Peruvian Jorge Benitez, a skilled