Stadio Piercesare Tombolato - Cittadella Stadium Guide

Stadio Piercesare Tombolato was inaugurated during the 1981/1982 season when AS Cittadella were plying their trade in the Interregional Championship which is the equivalent of Serie D. Municipally owned the stadium was designed to be multi-purpose, and even to this day it retains a five-lane athletics track which still receives regular use unlike a lot of other communal stadiums.

The stadium is named after goalkeeper Piercesare Tombolato who tragically died at the age of just 18 whilst playing for Olimpia Citadel in a friendly derby against Padua on 3rd March 1957. Regarded as a hot-prospect for the future, Tombolato accidentally collided with a rival player and died 22 days later in Citadel hospital after sustaining internal injuries.

With the exception two consecutive seasons at the turn of the millennium (2000/2001 and 2001/2002) where Cittadella ground-shared Padova’s Stadio Euganeo to satisfy stadium requirements for Serie B, the club have always played their home matches at Stadio Tombolato. As a team who has spent the majority of its history in the lower tiers of Italian football there often hasn’t been much impetus to expand or renovate the stadium beyond what’s required at a bare minimum.

However, this changed when the club defeated Cremonese in the 2007/2008 Serie C1 play-off final and subsequently earned promotion back to Serie B. Intent on maximising their matchday revenues, the capacity of the stadium was expanded to 7,623 and Cittadella requested special compensation from the FIGC to use the stadium. After temporarily borrowing the use of Stadio Omobono Tenni, the club were granted permission and on 29th November 2008 held the first league game at Tombolato against Ancona which ended in a 0-0 draw.

With the FIGC seemingly relaxing the rules regarding minimum stadium capacity for Serie B, it’s unlikely that Stadio Tombolato will be expanded further in the future. One scenario which might change this will be if the club are promoted to Serie A. During the 2009/2010 season they came quite close after qualifying for the play-offs before losing to Brescia in the semi-final.

View of Stadio Piercesare Tombolato

Stadio Pier Cesare Tombolato is comprised of four stands: North, East, South and West.

Click the thumbnails above to enlarge an image of each stand and to read a more detailed description of each part of the Stadium.