FlashFocus: Parma are back in Serie A after a turbulent yet captivating history
Today, the focus is on youth, as it cannot be otherwise, but the Krause family's objective is to bring trophies and champions back to the Tardini, just as the Tanzi family did in the 1990s, but without giving up the sustainability of a long-term project.
"Enjoy it". With these words, Fabio Pecchia urged his players last spring to celebrate Parma's promotion to Serie A, which came after three years spent, with ups and downs, in Serie B purgatory. A promotion conquered by dominating from start to finish, for the first time in its history, clinched first place.
A promotion with a special flavour, because it had not been since the days of the Parmalat bankruptcy that the Emilian club had returned to the top division with the awareness of having behind it a solid ownership with a long-term project and that, season after season, is demonstrating that it really wants to bring the Gialloblu back to the top.
Proof of this is the acquisition a few days ago of all the shares belonging to 'Nuovo Inizio', the group of entrepreneurs who in 2015 joined with the fans to refound the club and give it a future. This means that, now, the Krause family owns 99% of the club while the remaining 1% is still firmly in the hands of the people's shareholders even if it was and remains a symbolic share.
"Today we complete a journey that began with Nuovo Inizio," said president Kyle Krause.
"This marks an important moment that confirms our passion and commitment to the club, the players and staff, as well as our fans and the community of Parma. We are proud of Parma Calcio's more than 110 years of history and determined to lead it into a bright future. Our plans are ambitious and together we are building a solid future for the club'.
The origins of a myth
The Krause family has only experienced first-hand the last four of the 110 years of the Emilian club's history. A club that, incredible as it may seem, had never been in Serie A until 1990. A promotion, the one celebrated a few days before the start of the Italia '90 World Cup, achieved by the then unknown Nevio Scala, a young and promising coach chosen by Ernesto Ceresini, the same president who a few years earlier had signed a certain Arrigo Sacchi and also bet on Zdenek Zeman.
Ceresini, however, died suddenly in the middle of the season and, as a result, was unable to enjoy the results of his work, leaving a club that, a few months later, ended up in the hands of the Tanzi family, owners of the Parmalat brand that had been the club's main sponsor for some time.
Well, what happened from 1990 to 2002 can, without a doubt, be considered the greatest and most mythical time: two UEFA Cups (1995 and 1999), a Cup Winners' Cup (won in 1993 in addition to the final lost the following year), a European Super Cup (1993), three Italian Cups (1992, 1999 and 2002) and an Italian Super Cup (1999).
The only thing missing was the Scudetto (narrowly missed in 1997 with Carlo Ancelotti on the bench), but this does not detract from the fact that in those years, whoever wanted to win the title had to reckon with Parma. Proof of this is the long list of champions who have passed through the Tardini stadium.
A collection of phenomenal players
From Claudio Taffarel to Tomas Brolin, Faustino Asprilla, Gianfranco Zola, Fernando Couto, Gigi Buffon, Fabio Cannavaro, Lilian Thuram, Hernan Crespo, Enrico Chiesa, Juan Sebastian Veron and, of course, the Ballon d'Or winner Hristo Stoichkov, who only stayed one year at Parma (95-96), where he certainly did not have his best season.
However, the very fact that someone of his calibre had decided to leave Barcelona to move to a club in Emilia which, until a few years earlier, he had not even known existed gives an idea of the scale of the Parma phenomenon in the 1990s.
Suffice it to say that thanks to the triumphs achieved in that decade, Parma is still the fourth Italian club (and 16th European) to have won the most continental titles, surpassed only by the three queens of Serie A: AC Milan, Juventus and Inter. It is also one of five clubs, joined last spring by Atalanta, to have at least one European cup in its trophy cabinet without ever having won its national championship.
From dark days...
The last record set by the Gialloblu was a few years ago: Parma managed to go from Serie D to Serie A in just three years (2015-2018), an unprecedented feat in Italian football.
But what was Parma doing in Serie D? Let us remember that in the early 2000s, the Tanzi family was engulfed by one of the biggest scandals in recent Italian history.
It was no coincidence that on June 25th, 2004, Parma Football Club Spa was born, to which all rights of the insolvent Parma Associazione Calcio were transferred.
The new company, however, lasted just 11 years: in March 2015 came the 'second' bankruptcy. It was at that very moment that the group of entrepreneurs 'Nuovo Inizio' decided to take a step forward together with the fans, starting again from Serie D and giving the club, a year later, its current official name: Parma Calcio 1913.
To new beginnings
The rest is recent history, but the truth is that at Parma they are tired of always talking in the past tense. The fans are looking ahead and so is the Krause family. For the time being, the intention is to bet, rightly so, on youth, as shown by Adrian Bernabe, Ange-Yoan Bonny, Adrian Benedyczak, Simon Sohm, Alessandro Circati and Mandela Keita.
And that is precisely the good news: the club has decided to build from the bottom up, without blowing smoke into the fans' eyes with high-sounding names that are too expensive for the club. The goal is to take one step at a time and transform the Parma meteor into one of the most important (and sustainable) in the Serie A universe.
