Associazione Sportiva Roma (Rome Sport Association), commonly referred to as Roma is an Italian professional football club based in Rome. Founded by a merger in 1927, Roma have participated in the top-tier of Italian football for all of their existence except for 1951–52.
Roma have won Serie A three times, in 1941–42, 1982–83 and 2000–01, as well as winning nine Coppa Italia titles and two Supercoppa Italiana titles. In European competitions, Roma won the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1960–61 and were runners-up in the 1983–84 European Cup and the 1990–91 UEFA Cup.
Fifteen players have won the FIFA World Cup while playing at Roma: Ferraris, Guaita and Masetti (1934); Donati, Monzeglio and Serantoni (1938); Bruno Conti (1982); Rudi Voller and Berthold (1990); Aldair (1994); Candela (1998); Cafu (2002); Daniele De Rossi, Simone Perrotta and Francesco Totti(2006).
A.S. Roma was founded in the summer of 1927 when Italo Foschi initiated the merger of three older Italian Football Championship clubs from the city of Rome: Roman FC, SS Alba-Audace and Fortitudo-Pro Roma SGS.
The purpose of the merger was to give the Italian capital a strong club to rival that of the more dominant Northern Italian clubs of the time. The only major Roman club to resist the merger was Lazio because of the intervention of the army General Vaccaro, a member of the club and executive of Italian Football Federation. All three founding clubs were relegated, but the fascist-aligned FIGC bet over the capacity of the new team to give a stronger representation to the capital of Italy, and they were awarded a wild card for the Divisione Nazionale, the Serie A forerunner.
The club played its earliest seasons at the Motovelodromo Appio stadium, before settling in the working-class streets of Testaccio, where it built an all-wooden ground Campo Testaccio; this was opened in November 1929. An early season in which Roma made a large mark was the 1930–31 championship, where the club finished as runners-up behind Juventus. Captain Attilio Ferraris, along with Guido Masetti, Fulvio Bernardini and Rodolfo Volk, were highly important players during this period.
Roma's colours of imperial purple with a golden yellow trim represents the traditional colours of Rome, the official seal of the Comune di Roma features the same colours. The gold and the purple-red represent Roman imperial dignity. White shorts and black socks are usually worn with the red shirt, however in particularly high key matches, the shorts and socks are the same colour as the home shirt.
A popular nickname for the club is "i lupi" ("the wolves") – the animal has always featured on the club's badge in different forms throughout their history. The emblem of the team is currently the one which was used when the club was first founded. It portrays the female wolf with the two infant brothers Romulus and Remus, illustrating the myth of the founding of Rome, superimposed on a bipartite golden yellow over maroon red shield. In the myth from which the club takes their nickname and logo, the twins (sons of Mars and Rhea Silvia) are thrown into the river Tiber by their uncle Amulius. A she-wolf then saved the twins and looked after them. Eventually, the two twins took revenge on Amulius before falling-out themselves – Romulus killed Remus and was thus made king of a new city named in his honour, Rome.
