As the Italian nation woke up on the 14th of June they were greeted by newspaper after newspaper exulting the Azzurri’s powerful win and performance over a highly tipped Belgian outfit at Euro 2016.
Heading into the tournament not much had been expected of the national team with opinion being rife that it was one of the worst teams in living memory. But in the space of 90 minutes all this seemed to change as Antonio Conte’s men produced arguably the performance of the tournament so far.
On that morning in the Tuscan town of Carrara the people no doubt woke up with the same giddiness of everyone else across the peninsula. For some in the town however the Italian victory was most likely very much to the back of their thoughts. Back on March 11th the local football club Carrarese had been declared bankrupt and today the 14th of June was the sixth and final bankruptcy auction attempting to save the club.
The club who the legendary Gigi Buffon grew up supporting and even bankrolled for a while, had finish the season just gone in fifth place in the Lega Pro Girone B. A quite remarkable achievement considering as said above that the club had been bankrupt since March.
All through that day of the 14th article after article was written on the performance of the Azzurri. Thousands and thousands of words were tapped on keyboards throughout the world while a courtroom in Carrara lay vacant for the sixth consecutive time and most likely the last time. As everyone applauded the Italians a club with 108 years of history was for all intents and purposes was going out of existence.
The win over Belgium may have breathed new life into the international set up but club football at the lower end of the professional scale is still very much gasping for oxygen. Come next season it is hoped that Lega Pro will have a total of 60 teams spread across three groups, at the moment it currently has 54.
Most worryingly over the next couple of weeks that number has the potential to drop rather than increase, with both Modena and Rimini also said to be suffering from significant financial difficulties. If those clubs do fail and of course there is no guarantee that they will (even Carrarese still have a tiny bit of hope) that would bring the number needed to reach the magic 60 up to nine clubs.
Where would these nine clubs be sourced from, the way that it has been done in the past is that teams that had been relegated the season before would apply for re-entry into the league, while clubs who had narrowly missed out on promotion from Serie D would also apply for entry.
As of now the nine teams relegated from Lega Pro in the 2015/16 season are:
Pro Patria, Cuneo, Albinoleffe, Savona, Lupa Roma, L’Aquila, Lupa Castelli Romani, Ischia and Melfi.
The teams from Serie D who won their respective play-offs for the right to be considered in the event of a club in Lega Pro going bankrupt (Yes it’s quite confusing) are:
Lecco, Fondi, Cavese, Olbia, Gavorrano, Correggese, Caronnese, Campodarsego.
There are clearly enough sides here to be able to fill up the nine required spaces for Lega Pro, but things in Italian football are rarely as simple as they seem. An article on Parmafanzine.it has run the rule over every club eligible for re-entry and this is what they have found.
Only four of the above mentioned sides have either the financial power, the facilities and the appetite to make the step up into Lega Pro. Three of the clubs are excluded on the grounds that they have been convicted of match fixing in the recent past. Others are excluded because they have serious debt problems, some of which received points penalties for such reasons last season. More again simply don’t have the required facilities to make the step up. One club are ineligible for the re-entry because they availed of it last season.
When Parmafanzine widen the criteria to see if other clubs could perhaps be allowed into Lega Pro they found that things followed a similar pattern. At the end of their investigation they found a total of 12 clubs for whom it was possible to apply for the entry into Lega Pro for the 2016/17 season. Of those 12 only four have confirmed that they will apply, those being Lupa Roma, Fondi, Cavese and Olbia. The rest are still sitting on the fence contemplating whether it is financially and football sensible to make the step up.
This presents Lega Pro with a big problem, as mentioned above it presently needs six teams to fill its quota of 60 clubs for next season. Only four clubs as of present will apply for those six positions and not forgetting that the future of three clubs included in the 54 number are hanging by the balance.
More than likely more of the 12 clubs will apply for the re-entry but it is a very worrying situation that the league finds itself in at the moment. Bankruptcy and clubs disappearing from the landscape are nothing new in Lega Pro but it is beginning to hit the point where it is becoming unsustainable. Less and less clubs are proving to have the financial clout to sustain a professional outfit and with the Italian economy still in the doldrums this is unlikely to improve much anytime soon.
All this gloom aside Lega Pro remains an endlessly fascinating division to watch and the 2016/17 season is all set up to be the best yet with some huge historic clubs among its ranks if it can get its house in order by the commencement of the season.
The national side may have looked to have turned a corner against Belgium but its club game at the lower professional level remains very much in need of help. Help that will probably come far too late for Carrarese.
As Gigi Buffon celebrated in Lyon his boyhood club was put on life support, a club where he found his passion for calcio. Remember this everyone else, celebrate this victory of course but without the grassroots of the game without clubs like Carrarese those wins will become a lot less frequent.
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