The Campania seaside town of Salerno is home to yet another maroon kitted Italian outfit, Salernitana. Some English readers may have come across them in the Anglo Italian Cup of yesteryear, or indeed found themselves visiting this marvellous Italian city. I recollect being in Stoke on Trent when Ancona were playing at Vale Park and I bumped into some Salernitani fans who were going to the old Victoria Ground that same evening for a game with Stoke City!
Now I know the regular format of a “classic” Football Weekends article is to give the club in question some colour, how to get there and add in personal experience etc, and I will get there, but their is so much going wrong in Italian football these days, some of it beyond incredulity, forgive a morsel of meat on the bones, which if you stick with me gets around to Salernitana, who played host to arguably the most ridiculous episode in football anywhere, ever!!
The summer of 2018 will go down in the legend of Calcio as particularly full of anger and discontent, with the usual array of clubs going bust causing more mayhem than usual! The start of 2018/19 saw the second tier, Serie B somewhat arrogantly puff the chest out and start with 19 clubs instead of 22 following the demise of Cesena, Bari and Avellino. Entella, who had lost a “play out” to be the 4th relegated team last season perhaps had the strongest claim to have retained Serie B status, but they are perhaps just too small a club to poke the bear, and had Venezia, Perugia, or even Salernitana been in this situation the ruling may have been different. However Entella are determined to fight their corner, and rightly so. A second court decision deemed that Cesena should have been deducted 15 points last term. It is a useless ruling as that club no longer exists and last season is gone. No one will ever suffer that 15 point deduction as “new” Cesena (changing AC to FC!) are technically a different club and have already dropped down two levels, however Entella fight on, and further court rulings were expected, but when the dust settled, despite undoubtedly being denied their B status, Entella and one or two others have been given “financial compensation” to keep going in the third tier which led to an inordinate pile up of games. Oddly it wasn’t be such a backlog of fixtures as Viterbese, a team from Viterbo which is situated in Northern Lazio, who refused to kick a ball until this was all cleared up!! There beef isn’t a desire to be promoted, but general disgruntlement that all these “relegated” sides who could have been re-instated into Serie B are now playing in the third tier thus forcing them into Girone C, which is the southern division with a great number of unwanted lengthy away fixtures to Sicily, Puglia and Calabria, the most southerly regions of Italy! At the start of November they finally started playing in the “south” group, where every side will be motivated to give their rather “arrogant” attitude towards them all a good going over, and true to form, points are proving tricky for Viterbese!
Part of the rational for telling you these current issue “quirks” is to soften you for the mother of all maniacal incidents in Italian football, where Salerno played witness at the Stadio Arechi! Campania is a large region south of Lazio, home to a good number clubs, and as you’d expect local rivalries run deep. The town of Nocera might not be known to everyone, but it is split into two, not North and South Nocera etc, but far more amusingly Superiore and Inferiore!! Imagine the banter or the stigma of being from Inferiore!! Well the local football team showed unbelievable inferior sportsmanship in a game that became known as “the derby of shame” when it was scheduled as a third tier fixture on 10th November 2013, Salernitana v Nocerina.
The local Salerno authorities fearing violence banned the Nocerina fans from attending what they deemed a “high risk” encounter, and their Ultras not only took exception at this decision, they took matters into their own hands and rather sinisterly threatened their own players with death threats if the game was played! Come kick off, Nocerina were in the stadium but they hadn’t appeared on the pitch. Forty minutes late they took to the field, but exactly what plot was hatched in the dressing room goes beyond comprehension! As a plane flew over the Arechi flying a banner saying “Respect Nocera and its fans”, the game kicked off, but within a minute the first indication that something was amiss occurred when Nocerina made all three substitutions!! They then proceeded to take it in turn to rush Salernitana players and fall down feigning injury. The Youtube footage is well worth a peek as the crowd reaction changes to laughter, and then anger as they finally see what Nocerina were endeavouring to achieve. Having no subs left for all these “injured” players, and remarkably still at 0-0 against only 7 men the referee had no option but to abandon the game after just 22 minutes! The Nocerina players then had to run a gauntlet of abuse and objects being hurled from the stands. The FIGC investigated and fined Nocerina a sum of money that largely meant that the club was disbanded, with many of the players given lengthy playing bans. It took nearly two years for a club in Nocera to resume football when ASD Citta di Nocera 1910 was established having found a local club in the fifth tier to usurp and move into their city, thus avoiding the need to start in third tier of the regional league in Campania, essentially the ninth tier of the Italian game! They are now in the fourth tier and once again known as Nocerina, but thankfully they are still two tiers below Salernitana. The clubs have never played each other since that awful game five years ago now!
Salernitana are celebrating their centenary next year, having started out in the local Campania leagues in 1919/20, a season that would end in a first promotion, but it was not without a whiff of that Italian farce!! Having won their group by winning every game, Salernitana went into a two legged play off final against the other group winners, the magnificently named Brasiliano Napoli! Hilariously both clubs won the home leg 5-0, and with a tied aggregate a third game was scheduled. The game was never played, and Salernitana were promoted as Brasiliano refused to play in…….., yip Nocera Inferiore!! It was maybe a step up too quickly for Salernitana as they lost every game the following season and they were back where they started. It set in motion a century of snakes and ladders for the Salerno club. The giddy highs would be their two Serie A seasons in 1947/48 and 51 years later in 1998/99, sitting alongside the lows that include those all too familiar bankruptcies, a brace in Salernitana’s case in 2005 and 2011, all too recently. They restarted immediately in both cases, from the third tier in 2005, and a real low of the fifth tier in 2011. The evaporation of an entire tier of the Italian game since then partly explains the quick rise back to Serie B by 2014 following a play off success against Monza, a club you might become more familiar with in the next few years as they have been bought recently by Silvio Berlusconi!
Salerno is a one club city, but very much a football city, boasting an incredibly loyal and sizeable fan base. It comes as a surprise to me that they have only twice graced Serie A, but now that the finances have been steadied will Salernitana look to end its first 100 years nibbling at the top table next season?! Should such an eventuality become a reality, their crowds will rise, and they’d bring colour and passion to the much maligned top flight, and it’s largely more “northern” roster of clubs. Teams like Salernitana should be the bed rock of the top two tiers, but if they fail again it is testimony to the idea that the system is broken, and southern clubs in particular will always struggle to break the mould, despite great support and passion!
The Stadium
Stadio Arechi holds a considerable 37,200 with two tiers of seating and terracing on all four sides. They have had some issues with flood water on the main stand side, and parts of the lower tier remain closed, but with the capacity never required at present, repairing the issue isn’t top priority! I learned such pearls having troubled a groundsman to open the gates and let me in for a few of these photos. The playing surface has a moat around it with a high fence behind the Curva Sud where the home Ultras stand, thereby trying to restrict the opportunity to hurl stuff. Salerno is a city with a magnificent backdrop of mountains, and it would be improper if one of these was not visible, which it is, even from the corner flag at pitch level.
You will get a cracking view no matter where you choose to sit. The stadium first hosted football in 1990, when ironically Padova were in town. I say Ironically because I was in Salerno in mid September and available for a Friday or Monday night, or a Saturday action, once the “staple” of the Serie B card before TV schedules seem to have splintered the games in all directions. Anyway, I lucked out as that game was played on the Sunday when we were in Positano for my girlfriends birthday, so the Salernitana v Padova the ’18/19 edition passed me by!
Getting to the Stadium
Despite being unable to see Salernitana play, I took advantage of a cloudy day to venture out to the stadium, and while it’s towering floodlights are visible from the coastal walkway near centre of the city, courtesy of the curved nature of the bay, it is a whopping 7 km’s away! It is a rather fine walk along the waterfront largely, but gradually the road takes you slightly away from the coast which is fine as the stadium is about a half kilometre from the sea. Buses 5,12,21,24 and 42 all head out that way, but the buses don’t seem all that frequent! One alternative way is to take a train headed south from the main station, which stops at San Leonardo Stadio Arechi, with the stadium within easy walking from here!
Out at the stadium you will find an array of building sites as the surrounding area seems to be designed where Salerno will next expand, and therefore the immediate area is bereft of bars and restaurants. The nearest places for a beer or a pizza are about a kilometre away from the stadium on the road leading back into the city near the San Leonard railway station.
Entry to the stadium will cost between 15 Euro for the Curva, and between 25 for opposite the main stand and 50 Euros for a central main stand seat.
Football Adventures with James Rendall 