Inside Story: Parma – once giants of Serie A must start again

James Horncastle 15:33 29/06/2015
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  • Parma' Costa (l) competes with Palermo's Dybala in Parma's final victory in Serie A (April).

    “Game over,” proclaimed Il Corriere della Sera. 

    The auction held to sell bankrupt Parma went five rounds but there were no takers. Interested parties, including Mike Piazza the former catcher for the New York Mets and latest colourful character in this desperate story, withdrew.

    Not even the work of the trustees Angelo Anedda and Alberto Guiotto to reduce the club’s debt on the sporting side of the business from €74 million (Dh303m) to €22.6m (Dh92.6m), a debt that needed to be cleared if Parma were to have any hope of being granted a license to play in Serie B next season, could tempt investment. 

    It was an “impossible case” said Pietro Rogato, the judge ruling on it, enough to scare off any potential investor. A look at the books revealed total debts of €218m (Dh893m) and no less than 99 players under contract. 

    And so Parma as we know them are gone. A year after finishing sixth, their best season in a decade, and believing they were back in Europe for the first time in eight years, they lie at the bottom of the football tier in Italy, in the amateur Serie D. “I am too shocked,” said a tearful Hernan Crespo. 

    Some of Parma's legends.

    In hindsight, the FIGC’s refusal to grant Parma a license to play in the Europa League last June after they couldn’t afford to make a relatively negligible tax payment of €300,000 (Dh1.2m) should have set alarm bells ringing. Instead the circuses owner Tommaso Ghirardi had thrown the previous season to celebrate the club’s centenary and 20th anniversary of winning the Cup Winners’ Cup at Wembley left the impression all was rosy. Like the villages Prince Potemkin erected along the Dnieper river to fool Catherine the Great that life was beautiful in that part of the world, they were a facade hiding an ugly reality.

    To give an indication of how ugly consider the circumstances in which Ghirardi assumed control in 2006. After improbably surviving being sucked into one of Europe’s biggest corporate fraud scandals when a €14bn (Dh57.4bn) hole was discovered in the accounts of Parmalat, the company run by the club’s then owner Calisto Tanzi, Parma were relatively debt-free at a managable €16m (Dh65.6m).

    There was no reason why the future, let alone the very existence of the club, should ever be put at risk again. And yet under Ghirardi that figure rose by 1,131 per cent.  When you consider that €220m (Dh902m) from TV rights alone has flowed into the club over that time it begs the question how things have got to this sorry state? 

    Scrutiny fell on the army of players who were listed as playing for or affiliated with Parma at one stage: 30 in the first team, 109 out on loan, 16 at third division Gubbio, 22 at ND Gorica and 44 co-owned with other clubs. 

    General manager Pietro Leonardi’s background is with Udinese and it was assumed they were replicating the network model they had set up with Watford and Granada, buying players low, developing them and then selling them on for a profit. But if that really was the strategy – and it remains unclear – it wasn’t successful. 

    It also emerged that they had borrowed against future earnings from season ticket sales and TV rights among other things and spent the money. Three years behind on the rent of the Stadio Ennio Tardini, the cash remaining to pay the players’ wages ran out at the beginning of last season. A points-penalty arrived but the FIGC did nothing more. On their watch, a terrible situation deteriorated beyond rescue. 

    In December, Ghirardi sold Parma to the Albanian oilman Rezart Taci. Sixty days later, the club changed hands again. Enter Giampietro Manenti. Stopped by police in Parma, a check on the vehicle history of the Citreon C3 he was driving revealed €1,900 (Dh7,700) in unpaid fines. How could he claim to be able to save Parma when he couldn’t even square up for them? 

    In the meantime, the bailiffs had long since moved in, confiscating benches, gym equipment and other items from the training ground to auction off. The game against Udinese in February was postponed because there wasn’t enough money to pay the electricity bill for the floodlights or the stewards at the Tardini. “Closed for a robbery” read a placard attached to its gates. 

    Fed up, the likes of Antonio Cassano abandoned ship, ripping up their contracts. Captain Alessandro Lucarelli vowed to go down with it even if it meant playing in the fourth division. The dignity coach Roberto Donadoni showed in ensuring Parma honoured its commitment to fulfil all their fixtures in Serie A was widely admired. 

    Belatedly the FIGC intervened and made €5m (Dh20.5m)  that had been collected in fines available to pay their remaining expenses. Counter-intuitively bankruptcy in March brought with it a sense of relief. It meant a stop to the pseudo-saviours and false promises. For the first time in the season they were able to concentrate on their football, holding Inter and Napoli to draws and shocking Juventus 1-0. But it was too late on the pitch and off it. La Repubblica claimed Parma had been “assassinated.”

    The authorities sought to absolves themselves and insist unconvincingly that new rules will ensure it never happens again while Leonardi incredibly looks set to be given another chance by Serie B side Latina. 

    It’s a disgrace. Parma’s contribution to calcio is indelible. Arrigo Sacchi’s football revolution began there in the mid-80s. His former classmate at coaching school, Zdenek Zeman, led the then second-tier side to a famous friendly win against Real Madrid and although Parma may not have reached Serie A until 1990, their star would burn so brightly over that decade, nostalgia for the era at the club stretches beyond Italy. 

    After Juventus, Inter and Milan, they are the most successful Italian club in Europe of the last quarter of a century. The UEFA Cup they won in 1999 is the last by a representative of Serie A. 

    To flick through Panini albums of those years is to be transported to a time when Gianfranco Zola jinked past defenders, Tino 
    Asprilla somersaulted in celebration, a precocious Gigi Buffon became Superman and could count Lilian Thuram, Fabio Cannavaro, Seba Veron and Hernan Crespo among his team-mates. 

    Dismayed by the plight of his former club Nevio Scala, the coach behind Parma’s early successes in Europe, is willing to step off his tractor, leave his vineyard in Lozzo Atestino and come out of retirement. He speaks for many when he says: “Parma can cease to exist on paper and may disappear from the news but not from the fans’ memories. The emotions they gave us will remain forever. This has to give us courage to start over again.” 

    Fellow Emilian clubs Carpi and Sassuolo are now models to follow. The long road back starts now.

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