Nessuna pietà a giugno (in english, No mercy in june) is the title chosen by photographer Luca Cepparo for the reportage that spans four months of preparation and combat by the Greens of San Giovanni, one of the historic teams of Florentine football. A project that doesn’t just document an ancient sport, but digs into the folds of a collective rite that Florence renews every year, with the same intensity with which it defended its identity in 1530, during the siege of Charles V.

Historic Florentine football is a game that resembles war more than a match. Twenty-seven players per side, no substitutions, fifty minutes in which almost anything goes. But behind the ferocity lies something deeper: the memory, pride, and indomitable spirit of a city.

Cepparo, a Milan native raised with a longing for a still-living popular tradition, found in Florence the ideal ground to fill that void. His gaze, inspired by 20th-century documentary photography, settles on details, empty spaces, and moments of waiting. Not only the blood and dust of the arena, but also faces, everyday gestures, and the moments when tension dissolves into normality.

The decision to follow only the Greens of San Giovanni is a statement of intent: to narrow the field of view in order to go deeper, to immerse oneself in a microcosm to return a universal story. The result is a series of images that do not try to explain everything, but invite questions, drawing you into the slow rhythm of preparation and the explosive tempo of the match.