June 23 – Parma have finally been stripped of their status as a professional football club as the administrators of the bankrupt club conceded defeat in their attempts to find a buyer after Baseball legend Mike Piazza and Giuseppe Corrado pulled out of talks.
A statement on the club’s website confirmed that “the administrators of Parma FC, Dr Angelo Anedda and Dr Alberto Guion, communicated that as of 14.00 today, June 22 2015, no offers have been received for the sporting rights of the club. In the coming hours the administrators will meet with the creditor’s committee and the bankruptcy judge Dr Pietro Rogato to make the necessary arrangements for the bankruptcy proceedings.”
The club had been declared bankrupt in March and only managed to complete the season in the Serie A with support from the Italian Football Federation after being unable to pay players and having to cancel matches due to lack of funds.
This is the second time the club has gone bankrupt in ten years. During its glory years the club was owned by the Parmalat empire and honours included three Coppa Italias, two UEFA Cups, the Cup Winners Cup and coming second in the Serie A to Juventus in 1997.
After recovering from the crash of Parmalat, the club looked to be returning to stability, but in came Tommaso Ghirardi as the new owner who spectacularly mismanaged the club, building up massive debts, before walking away after Parma was refused a license to play in European competition. Recently the club was twice sold for a Euro – with the new owners in each case promising to pay off the debts and invest in the club.
However the promises of the new owners turned to be as worthless as their bank accounts were empty – with matters descending into total farce as Giampietro Manenti took over and it quickly became obvious he was the “poorest man in Parma”, when he had his Citroen towed away for non-payment of parking fines, was refused a job slicing meat on a deli counter and was eventually arrested on charges of attempted money laundering.
Although some have argued Parma is a small-town club which over-achieved, unfortunately for Italian football, Parma is not unique, with other teams such as Fiorentina, Napoli and Torino having collapsed under massive debts. Attempts by the Italian Football Federation to improve the situation by imposing financial checks have proven to be fairly ineffective, given a culture in which clubs are in many cases run in an unprofessional manner.
Parma needed to find a buyer to clear €22.6 million of immediate debt – principally money owed to staff and players before they could have been allowed to retain their status in the professional leagues and register for Serie B. However their total debts are nearly €75 million and too large for even the deepest pocketed investors in Italian football.
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