The team named after a Coen Brothers character is the most representative of popular football in Italy – a club with a cooperative structure that started as a protest and has since become a school with more than 300 footballers, men and women, across all youth categories.
Words: Jose A Cano / Stefano Nicoli
"We're looking for a more human football, closer to the ground. Football used to be popular; now it's become something for the rich, almost like golf or tennis. A kid signing up for a football school in Italy pays 1,000 euros in registration fees and 300 euros for equipment. To train three times a week? Here, everyone can come. We don't make decisions based on money."
Francesco Bragalone is the coach of the first women's team at Centro Storico Lebowski, which plays in the fourth tier of Italian football, Promozione. He receives us in the only stand of the club's stadium, the Curva Moanna Pozzi – named after the late Italian adult film actress – while preparing an important talk for his players: they lost their previous match, and it's time to review their mistakes.
This veteran coach believes that the fans of the big Calcio teams "would like to have what we have here. Lebowski belongs to its supporters, and that makes it live differently. Everyone looks out for everyone. The men's first team is the most followed, that's normal, but every Monday or Tuesday, people tell me about the women's result, and I know how all the youth teams did. Lebowski is also about the neighbourhood kids being here instead of on the streets, and you care about the results because you feel like family."
CS Lebowski is the best-known team in Italian popular football, a member-owned, cooperative-structured club in the style of the pioneering United of Manchester. Its name is a not-so-subtle reference to Jeff Bridges' character from The Big Lebowski (1998), by the Coen Brothers, whose characteristic bearded profile with sunglasses features on the crest.
The Dude, Il Drugo in the Italian dubbing. An anachronistic, lazy character who prefers meeting friends for bowling to the salons of the rich. A guy opposed to any kind of protocol or affectation. A normal person. Uno di noi — one of us.
The club that started as a joke among fans discontented with Fiorentina now has more than 300 players distributed across all youth categories in both men's and women's football.
"Lebowski was born from a group of friends who were fed up with business football and discovered that in their city, there was a team in the last category of Italian football that had 0 points. I mean, it was shit," explains Duccio, one of those friends and founder of the cooperative, who receives us while it's his turn at the club bar and who only allows us to credit him in this interview as an 'ultra of CS Lebowski'.
"We started supporting it as a joke until we made it ours, and it became something very serious," he adds. "The values we wanted to defend were football as social cohesion, and that is consistent with what happens here. The kids who come feel it, the parents feel it."
Duccio and the company's joke began in 2004, with a group of Fiorentina tifosi transferring their affections to what was then AC Lebowski. When this dissolved in 2010 due to financial problems, they refounded it as the current cooperative, Centro Storico Lebowski. The name Centro Storico, historic centre, was a complaint also against the touristification of the city, a reclaiming of the neighbourhood and identity-based origins of Florentine football.
"Winning isn't secondary. We want to win. We have a professional structure. But winning isn't more important than avoiding the vices of modern football. We set ethical limits on salaries because it's not fair for a teacher or a bus driver to earn less than a footballer. That doesn't make it harder... but our objective is to win," explains Raffaele Ballini, coach of the men's first team since mid-season and sporting director of the club for four years.
"This way of working is very particular. Everything must be shared and done in small steps. And we have our philosophy. If we find a very strong player who wants to come and we can afford him, he shouldn't overshadow our players with whom our fans already have a bond. No one is more important than another; we don't accept that a player or a coach can limit someone who's been here 5, 6, or 7 years."
Ballini is clear about respecting results: he took the reins of the men's first team at the beginning of 2026 precisely because of the urgency of achieving them. Until mid-April, Lebowski was fighting in the last positions of Group B of Tuscany in Promozione, the sixth level of Italian football, threatening to drop to Prima Categoria.
"For me, Lebowski is the perfect union between maintaining passion for football and doing something on a social level"
explains Matteo, coach of the men's under-19 team.
"Here I am a militant, not just a coach."
In his case, he has been part of the club for seven years, both in different roles within the structure and as a member and fan. He defends the move to the periphery, to Via de' Vespucci, which happened three years ago, as a way of "being more connected to the territory; we'd like to grow here beyond football, to be a multi-sport club."
La Scola Calcio was born in 2016, and for Matteo, it is the most important element of the club: "football is a means to do something more. We're not only interested in creating players, but in having human beings with the most open values possible."
In his case, he defends the kinship of these clubs with the old 'Case del Popolo': "My father, every time he comes, tells me it reminds him of them. They were social spaces where you could play foosball, meet your neighbours, and where there was a political dimension... For me, it's more about the sense of community than football."
Before finishing, we ask Duccio, the founder and veteran, about CS Lebowski's sporting objectives. He answers us while preparing sandwiches for the players on the women's and men's first teams after they finish training. "The Champions! Seriously speaking: we're looking for a piece of sun in this shitty modern world. Being together and finding an escape in this world only creates problems. Here we are free, we are happy doing things the way we like. That's better than the Champions."