Serie A – GAME OF THE PEOPLE

ROMFORD of the Essex Senior League have won the FA Vase at Wembley against league stable-mates Great Wakering Rovers. Romford won 3-0 with three second half goals from Hassan Nalbant (2) and Sam Deering in front of 19,000 people. Romford last had a team at Wembley in 1949 when the current club’s predecessors reached the FA Amateur Cup final. That Romford FC folded in 1978 but at one stage they were aiming for election to the Football League. The Vase victory compensates for the team’s recent defeat in the Essex Senior League play-offs (Romford finished third), which saw them lose to Sporting Bengal United and miss out on promotion to step four of the non-league pyramid.

ZENIT St.Petersburg are in danger of losing their crown as Russian champions for the first time in more than five years. With just two games to go, Zenit have slipped to second place after losing 1-0 at home to CSKA Moscow who won through a second half penalty from Fyodor Chalov. Dynamo Moscow are now top following their 3-2 win at Baltika, one point ahead of Zenit. Dynamo, who are coached by the Czech Marcel Lička, last won a championship in 1976. Krasnador are in third, two points behind Dynamo. On the final day of the season (May 25), they are at home to Dynamo, while Zenit play Rostov. Zenit have won the title for the past five seasons with an average margin of victory of 10 points.

GATESHEAD of the National League have won the FA Trophy after recently being denied a chance to enter the play-offs to the EFL due to failing the league’s ground ownership rules. They beat Solihull Moors, the team they were scheduled to meet in the play-offs, on penalties after the two teams drew 2-2. Gateshead were runners-up in the competition in 2022-23, losing 1-0 to Halifax. For Solihull, they have suffered double heartbreak at Wembley, missing out on both the play-offs and the Trophy on penalties in the space of seven days.

SILKEBORG, managed by former Manchester City striker Uwe Rösler, won the Danish Cup final, beating AGF from Aarhus 1-0 in the final at the Parken stadium. The winning goal was scored by Peruvian international full back Oliver Sonne. The game received huge exposure on social media due to the TV broadcast using a new technique called “Manager Mode”, which included name bars on the players, formations and data. For example, Sonne’s winning goal, as it was scored, revealed that the ball was travelling at 87 kilometres per hour. While some viewers were excited by the technology, others felt it added nothing positive to the occasion. How long until this appears on Premier League screenings?

COMO, whose chief executive is former Wimbledon and Chelsea midfielder Dennis Wise, have been promoted to Serie A for the first time in 21 years. The club secured their place in the top flight with a 1-1 draw against Cosenza. Como are managed, on an interim basis, by Welshman Osian Roberts. The club has a chequered past having suffered bankruptcy twice. They play at the Stadio Giuseppe Sinigaglia, a stadium that was built under orders of Benito Mussolini in 1927.

ITALIAN football has rarely let teams from outside the Milan-Turin axis into the title race. Not even the capital, Rome, has a lengthy list of major honours. Parma, a city known for food production rather than football, had a spell when it threatened to challenge for major honours. Between 1991 and 1996, Parma finished in the top six in Serie A in five out of six seasons. They won two European trophies and the Coppa Italia and had an exciting side that made life uncomfortable for the aristocrats of Italy.

Before winning promotion in 1990, Parma had spent most of their history in Serie B and C. In 1989, Nevio Scala, a former AC Milan player who had won the European Cup in 1969 with the club, was appointed coach at Parma. Promotion led to Parma’s parent, the food giant Parmalat, investing in the club to make it more competitive in Serie A. Italian football was enjoying a golden period at the time with Milan the European champions and Napoli just out of their Maradona peak. Sampdoria, an unlikely winner of the scudetto in 1991, demonstrated there was significant strength in depth in Serie A.

While Parma’s football put the city on the map from a sporting perspective, Parmalat’s rise also helped the region become something of an industrial hub. The company was founded in 1961 by Calisto Tanzi and went through a period of intense growth in the 1990s. The fortunes of the club and its sponsor were indelibly linked. In their first season in the top flight, Parma finished sixth and followed that up with a seventh place in 1991-92. They also won their first piece of silverware in the form of the Coppa Italia, beating Juventus 2-1 on aggregate in the final.

The 1992-93 season saw Parma enjoy their best league campaign and also win the European Cup-Winners’ Cup. In the close season, they had signed Colombian forward Faustino Asprilla from Atlético Nacional for US$ 10.9 million. Asprilla was a mercurial individual but he possessed incredible skill and nobody really knew what he would do next on the pitch. Signing him was a coup for Parma, who beat off the attention of a number of clubs to get their man.

Parma already had two excellent forwards in Swedish international Tomas Brolin and Alessandro Melli, so the prospect of fielding all three was exciting. In 1992-93, they finished nine points behind champions Milan, who were the only away side to win at Parma’s Stadio Ennio Tardini. They got their revenge on Milan when they won 1-0 at San Siro thanks to a second half goal by Asprilla – Milan’s first defeat in 58 games. Parma ended the season well with two defeats in 18 and secured third place.

The Cup-Winners’ Cup saw Parma dispose of Hungarian side Újpest, Portugal’s Boavista, Sparta Prague of the Czech Republic and Atlético Madrid before lining up at Wembley Stadium against Antwerp of Belgium. Parma were confident, despite not having the injured Asprilla in their starting line-up, as they were in excellent form. Antwerp, modestly, confessed that they were genuinely surprised to have got as far as the final. The Italians were favourites and within eight minutes, skipper Lorenzo Minotti had volleyed them in front. But three minutes later, Antwerp drew level as Francis Severeyns took advantage of a defensive slip to score. The game was quite open and on the half hour, Melli powered home a header to restore Parma’s lead. Finally, with five minutes remaining, Parma sealed their win with a goal from Stefano Cuoghi.

The football world regarded Parma as a little club, a “minnow”, as they had been playing in the third tier of Italian football just a few years earlier. The club would eventually attract some outstanding players passing through their ranks, such as Gianluigi Buffon, Lilian Thuram, Fabio Cannavaro and Hernán Crespo, as well as coaches like Carlo Ancelotti.

Peaople started to take notice of Parma from the Italian region of Emilia. Their coach, Scala, was also being recognised for his achievements. Scala was a disciple of former Parma boss Arrigo Sacchi’s style, a pressing game with a flat back four and a troupe of midfielders who restricted their opponents’ space. But he was his own man and developed a 5-3-2 formation that was very effective.

The following season, Parma signed Gianfranco Zola, the impish Napoli forward and he ended with 18 Serie A goals. Parma reached the Cup-Winners’ Cup final again, but lost 1-0 to Arsenal in Copenhagen. The next three seasons would see them finished fifth, third and sixth and in 1994-95, they won the UEFA Cup, beating compatriots Juventus 2-1 on aggregate with former Juve forward, Dino Baggio, scoring both of Parma’s goals. Baggio had been signed after the 1994 World Cup in the US. Juventus deprived them of another trophy, however, when they beat them by the same scoreline over two legs in the Coppa Italia final.

In subsequent years, Parma became insolvent because of the financial meltdown of Parmalat, which led to the founder, Tanzi, being covincted of fraud. Parma reformed as Parma Calcio 1913 and are currently in Serie B, but they could be on the brink of returning to Serie A. If they need inspiration, they might like to look back on the mid-1990s when the Gialloblu took on the big guns of Calcio.