The disparity of Italian soccer
It is every fans worst nightmare. The club they love going bankrupt and forced to start again in the amateur leagues.
This nightmare became a reality this week for the fans of three clubs: Serie B’s FC Bari 1908 and AC Cesena and AC Reggiana of Serie C. All three were denied licences for the upcoming season and now face bankruptcy.
This sadly isn’t new to Italy. In the last five years, 26 Serie C clubs have gone out of business and in the last 15 years, 146 clubs failed to register for the new season including the likes of Fiorentina, Napoli and Parma.
In most cases, it’s not the end for these clubs: new legal entities are formed, new owners are found and the clubs can begin again from the lower leagues. But this resurrection process can be long and painful for fans.
For Bari and Cesena, however, this is a new experience. The former were founded in 1908, the latter in 1940. That’s 188 years of football history signed away with a stroke of a pen.
“This is a bad day, not only for football in Bari, but for the whole city,”Mayor of Bari Antonio Decaro told gianlucadimarzio.com
“It’s a day of defeat, which burns 1,000 times more than any defeat on the pitch. We tried everything possible; I perhaps even went beyond my remit as a mayor.
For two clubs in the second division to go bankrupt speaks volumes to the disparity in Italian football.
It seems as if the rich get richer and the poor stay poor in Italy.
Bari for example had the water supply to their stadium cut off for non-payment of a €6,000 bill while Juventus forked €105m for 33 year-old Cristiano Ronaldo.
Bari are just one example of a struggling Serie B team yet they still managed to make the Serie A play-offs. How can a team like Bari be expected to compete with the likes of Juventus, Roma, Napoli and Milan when they can’t even pay for water?
Some teams can bounce back Parma for example have shown how to do it but it was not an easy process.
In a desperate attempt to raise money to try and clear debts of €200m the club were forced to sell three Coppa Italias won in 1992, 1999 and 2002, the Cup Winners’ Cup from 1993, the 1994 European Super Cup, the Uefa Cups of 1995 and 1999 and the 1999 Italian Super Cup.
The club was declared bankrupt in 2015 and re-founded in Serie D but secured a record three straight promotions to return to Serie A.
This could not have been done without the fans. In the club’s first season, it sold over 9,000 season tickets, more than doubling the Serie D record.
It remains to bee seen how Parma will cope on their return to top flight football but no club and no fan should have to go through what Parma have gone through.
In a sport where a fee of €50m has become everyday it’s bizarre to think of clubs unable to pay wages, yet for many in Italy it is a reality.
More and more the Serie A is becoming an elite club with the same teams yo-yoing between the leagues. It is becoming more and more rare for a new comer to win promotion.
Can the playing field be levelled or is there just too much of a pay gap between the divisions?
