I have googled and found many solutions but none work for me.
I am trying to clone from one machine by connecting to the remote server which is in the LAN network.
In my case the problem was none of the git configuration parameters but the fact that my repository had one file exceeding the maximum file size allowed on my system. I was able to check it trying to download a large file and getting an "File Size Limit Exceeded" on Debian.
After that I edited my /etc/security/limits.conf
file adding et the end of it the following lines:
To actually "apply" the new limit values you need to re-login