Lombardo, Evani, then winter and Mancini in the background, failed the miracle to the boys of the glorious era of the 1991 championship. The Blucerchiato club relegates for the first time in its history in the third series. How could it happen?
It really happened. After seventy-nine years of life, spent largely in Serie A with a few falls in B on the shoulders, Sampdoria relegates for the first time in its history in Serie C, which he had already touched at the end of the 2001-02 season, however avoiding the fall in the abyss in extremis. From the Scudetto of ’91 and the final of the Cup of Champions, the highest points of the fantastic and inimitable group entrusted to Vujadin Boskov, the famous Sampd’oro, at the time of the fall in the third series, in the year in which Sampdoria made everything wrong, but everything in the field and outside. Choices, men, strategies, coaches. All. Four technicians, about forty players who arrived in the last two market sessions – summer and winter – to the surrender surrender, ten goalkeepers passed between field and bench. A disaster, which will now impose deep reflections because someone is evident, has made wrong (repeated) choices, since women also relegated and spring for the first time went down to A2, when just at the beginning of last January the property had declared: “We will overturn the sporting situation, even if probably next year it will still be Serie B”. It is over worse, and to think that a phrase of that day (“We need stability and we would also have it in Serie C”) had seemed almost blasphemous. And instead …
The magic vanished
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The miracle to the boys of Sampd’oro di Boskov – Lombardo, with the addition of Evani (arrived in ’93 in Genoa), then winter and Mancini in the background – because Samp woke up late and, above all, the technical values were not up to par. Yet thirty-five years ago the fairy tale of the terrible boys of Boskov was celebrated here, a coach-pasta that became a perennial icon for Genoa Sampdoriana, and whose beneficial effect remained such even when after the Scudetto Boskov he greeted and another technician who always loved and regret, Eriksson arrived. Just in those years, it was 1993, Evani arrived in Genoa, who a few weeks ago had made formally on the Samp from accepting a complicated assignment in the name of his Sampdorianity. There had been space and glory for a success in the Italian Cup, a final of Italian Super Cup lost to penalties with Milan, and then again with the arrival of new faces such as Mihajlovic, up to Mancini’s farewell in ’97. In fact, an era had closed and the slow decline had begun, the B in the summer of 1999 after seventeen seasons in a row in A. It takes the arrival of Riccardo Garrone to bring the club back to A with Novellino in 2003, and then a period of good results culminating with a final of the Italian Cup also lost, in the penalties in 2008-09 and, the following year, with access to the preliminary Champions. The new descent in B in 2011, then the succession by Riccardo (after his death) to his son Edoardo Garrone, until the arrival shock in the summer of 2014 by Massimo Ferrero.
The man of excesses
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Controversial character, who marked those Dorian years: at the first in truth he had been welcomed favorably by the Blucerchiata square. Seasons of ups and downs, with the unsuccessful attempt – when the situation began to falter and the club showed signs of financial difficulty – by Gianluca Vialli to detect the club at the head of a consortium, and then with the definitive collapse with the arrest of Ferrero himself following the hypotheses of very heavy crime for “multiple and serious criminal conduct”. It is the beginning of the end: Ferrero resigns, a new relegation to B arrives in B in 2023 when the club goes into liquidity crisis and the interregnum is entrusted as a management to another ex of the Scudetto, Lanna, which manages a complicated phase with the club that slips on the verge of bankruptcy. The intervention of Matteo Manfredi and Andrea Radrizzani – was decisive on May 30, 2023 – who resume the situation in his hand, find an agreement with the court for the so -called debt renovation and start the desired rebirth, with Ferrero who emerges definitively on stage. The rest is recent history. A first season of settlement in B, which began with a penalty. Then the second, the one just ended, started with great proclamations of direct promotion as the main objective and the slow fall towards the abyss, of which they are all guilty.
The scenarios
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Now it will be hard: the Asian investor has guaranteed the injection of new finances, and this is an important element to guarantee business continuity, after having already placed over a hundred millions in the club coffers. However, La Rosa, the club set -up, will be completely reviewed, the costs, with a mountain engagement which as a top club of B (around 20 million) will have to go down drastically and reduce by 75%, with the drop in television revenues and box office revenues. A downsizing that will not be painless. In short, a future that today, separately, appears nebulous, dark and full of questions.
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