For football fans of a certain age, tuning in to Gazzetta Football Italia on Channel 4 to watch James Richardson deliver his verdict on Sampdoria against Atalanta was a staple diet of a lazy weekend.
Having watched copious amounts of Italian football during the 1990s, how sad it is to see what has become of one of the most colourful clubs in Serie A, Parma.
This week saw the club realise the full extent of their financial woes as they were declared bankrupt and unable to compete in Serie B, having been relegated from Serie A at the end of the season.
The upshot of all this is that a team that, in the 90s, boasted a squad including Dino Baggio, Lilian Thuram, Fabio Cannavaro, Gianluigi Buffon, Hernan Crespo, Juan Sebastian Veron and Enrico Chiesa, to name but a few, and with Carlo Ancelotti at the helm, will now take residence in Serie D – an amateur league.
The reason for Parma’s demise is a sustained period of horrific financial mismanagement, culminating in them being refused entry into last season’s Europa League competition.
It’s not the first time that Parma have encountered financial woes. They were declared insolvent back in 2004 following the demise of their chief financial backers and club sponsors Parmalat after a fraud investigation.
They were able to continue to compete in Serie A after being placed under special adminstration, but the developments of the past week represent a new low for the two-time Uefa Cup and three-time Coppa Italia winners.
But Parma’s demise is part of a wider issue. Italian football, despite what a Champions League final appearance from Juventus and a healthy coefficient may suggest, is in real trouble. It hasn’t recovered from the match-fixing revelations of 2006, where a number of the top sides in the country were implicated following a criminal investigation.
The problem now, though, is that with the European financial crisis – where Italy was one of the countries to be hit hardest – the domestic game has struggled, unable to leverage the lucrative nature of the modern game in the midst of economic struggle.
While commentators may bemoan the lack of English representation in the final stages of this year’s Champions League, and that Italian clubs’ success could threaten the English coefficient, Premier League fans should be thankful they are on this side of the fence.
