I am sure just about everyone who reads Football Weekends has at some point in life attended two games in a day, or indeed, judging by tales of ground-hopping both here and in Serbia, some may even have eeked out three in a day, or more! I am a member of three game club from my Montevideo viewing, where after a double on the Saturday, I got three games in on the Sunday! It is relatively easy there given around 36 of the 46 clubs in the Uruguayan three tier structure play in the capital!
I had already done two games in a day with AFC Blyth v Bedlington Terriers (Northern League Div2, tier 8, a new lowest league watched by me in any country!), then Gateshead v FC Halifax Town in the giddy 5th tier! In Italy it was never straight forward to see two games in a day, as until more recent years kick offs were kept very traditionally on a Sunday afternoon. It could be argued, the decline in Italian attendances coincided with the onset of TV companies mucking about with the kick off times, it is a nation that rightly likes it traditions.
I was perhaps at the cutting edge of attempts to see two games in Italy back in 2007, but my Empoli – Inter, followed by Pisa – Frosinone schedule floundered not because of transportation issues, but the farce of the newly introduced individualised tickets! Pisa were just back in Serie B and they were lumbered with the new Serie B and A requirements for detailed ticket entry (now includes Serie C too), and despite being there well before the game, no tickets were being sold at the stadium, having been outsourced to a theatre box office in town, which as luck would not have it was closed on a Saturday afternoon! I listened to the occasional noise from the stadium in a park near the Leaning Tower. It ended 0-0, and less than 5,000 were present, this was the first of a few nonsensical ticketing issues that temporarily tarnished my love of Italian football. However, it is difficult to abandon your first footballing love, the lure of calcio eventually brought me back, despite continued incredulity of the length of time it takes them to issue a ticket “dove Edimburgo?” (Where is Edinburgh) being one incredible question despite holding my passport; coupled with their inability to find GB on their computer list of countries! I no longer care if I am holding up the queue because of their uncertainty!!
So a number of years on, having nomadically been watching football in Argentina and Uruguay (the two closest to the Italian game!) I rediscovered the joy of calcio, culminating in 16 games watched in a 12 month period from Oct 2016 to Sept 2017, which more than than hints that I was a man back on the Italian trail! I still hadn’t done a double in Italy, and as luck would have it, in April last year, a bit like buses, not one, but two doubles came along in the space of 4 days!! It was fitting perhaps that my Italian club Ancona played a part in the very first one, hosting Teramo in an all or bust relegation tie that evening, having leisurely made it back up the Marche coast from an afternoon kick off in the lovely coastal resort town of San Benedetto Del Tronto, where Marche’s soon to be highest rank club, Sambenedettese were hosting Lombardia tiddlers Lumezzane. That ended in a draw, but Lumezzane would get relegated to the fourth tier at the seasons end along with Ancona who lost 0-1 that evening, allowing Teramo to survive and Ancona duly went bust. Now known as US Anconitana once more, they won promotion from the 7th tier last season on the long round back from a third bankruptcy episode.
You have to be patient to plan a double viewing in Italy, TV companies and the FIGC only agree and announce kick off times and dates etc about three weeks in advance! Or in the case of one unfortunate scheduling where I had booked a second trip to Italy that April to get my two best Italian friends (60 years of friendship between them!) together as their respective clubs Padova and Ancona were playing each other. A weekend scheduled fixture got changed to the Friday night which was still possible, but at no more than 10 days notice it was for no obvious reason moved to the Monday night, thereby taking me out of the equation as my flight home was on Monday afternoon! In planning a trip this April to catch Triestina v Padova I booked an early Friday flight, returning on the Tuesday to cover all eventualities, but hotel booking still needed to wait until actual date was firmed up!
So in some ways it takes a slice of luck, or accommodation that can be cancelled at short notice to allow a double fixture day to unfold. The centre piece of my story features a Serie C brace in the southern reaches of Lombardia last April. I moved my accommodation for the Saturday night from Bologna to Piacenza as the evening game was going ahead there. The day started with jumping off the Bologna-Milan train in Piacenza and leaving my luggage at the hotel thereby making life so much easier. I also had time to enjoy a little trek in the city centre, and despite looking a bit grim with a power station or something akin right beside the railway station, Piacenza has a rather lovely central area. I had also noted that the football stadium was about as far away from the centre as was possible. I’d worry about that upon my return from Cremona.
As the crow flies, Piacenza and Cremona are not a great distance apart. A car hire or a direct bus would probably get you there in no more than 45 minutes. There are no direct trains however, but jumping off at Codogno and catching the Milan – Mantova train gets you to Cremona in about 2 hours with half an hour or so in the connecting station. Cremona is the home of the famous Stradivarius Violin, and the mother of all viola statues greets you as you step out of the station. Alas, pre match I had little or no time to lose, and as luck would have it, while a good twenty minute walk staying close to the railway line, Cremonese’s neat and tidy Giovanni Zini stadium (Capacity 20,641) was reached twenty minutes before kick off in a game versus one of those “rogue Roma” clubs, in this case Lupo Roma from the capital suburb of Tivoli, having cast my eyes on Racing Roma earlier in the season at Arezzo. Both “Roman” clubs were relegated, and Racing seemed to disappear, so I can only assume another Italian club bankruptcy! I have now seen five teams from Roma in my time, I don’t think many can beat that!!
Cremonese have what can only be decribed as an unusual, if not unique colour scheme of Red and Grey stripes (Grigiorossi), and this was the second time I’d cast eyes on them playing in these colours following a 1988 encounter at Padova, back then it was only my second ever game in Italy! Oddly the Cremonese Grigiorossi were trying to close in on iI Grigi (The Greys!) of US Alessandria, whose Grey shirts and Black shorts is another unusual combo too! Alessandria had shot to fame in 2015/16 when they reached the Semi-Final of the Coppa Italia only to lose out to Milan narrowly, but they had taken that form into last season and were well clear at one time, but were faltering slightly by the time of this game allowing Cremonese the chance to dream of automatic promotion and thus avoiding the convoluted 27 team play offs!!
As a club Cremonese have had little to get too excited about, but graffiti in the home Curva hints to a day held in highest regard, the beating of Derby County 3-1 at Wembley in the Anglo-Italian Cup Final of 1992/93. They did have occasional one season campaigns nibbling in Serie A, but after that Wembley success it propelled them to promotion that season once more, and they stayed in the top flight until 1996, their last sighting in the top flight.
On this particularly warm April Saturday afternoon, Cremonese merely had to unlock an unambitious, strategically placed dustbin mob with no fans in Lupo, and the pressure would transfer to Alessandria for that evenings game versus Prato. In a dreadful stop, start game, where a soft ref pandered to every time wasting antic of the visitors, when a goal finally arrived in the second period it was a relief but ironically Cremonese then resorted to Lupo’s tactics and a nonsense of a game ended with the home fans thankful of the three points! Prato were to do what Prato do, wake up in the latter half of the season and save themselves from relegation perennially, and their big win at Alessandria that day kept the Cremonese juggernaut on track, and by the seasons end they had won the title, going back to Serie B for the first time since 2006, where they settled into second tier life very well. The footnote to this tale is that Alessandria got themselves all the way to the Final of the Play offs in Firenze, but came up against a resurgent Parma in the final, and the forever the bridesmaid feeling has taken a while to shake off as they failed once again in the play offs in the season past, while Parma have followed SPAL with a double promotion back to Serie A.
Cremona is a beautiful city, and well worth a longer look than the hour and a half run around I had after the game. The Torrazo Bell Tower in the centre of the town will afford you beautiful views across Cremona. But with another game in a few hours time, the reverse journey via Codogno was the only train that would get me back to Piacenza in time! Upon arrival at the station I jumped in a taxi as the clock was ticking and I knew the stadium was a long way off. Incidentally, Piacenza has a football hotel at the stadium (take note for another time!). The Piacenza derby was on offer that night, a rare fixture in the city between the better known Piacenza Calcio who are clawing their way back from bankruptcy, and Pro Piacenza, a curiousity of Italian football having been a sleepy amateur side until 2013 when they were merged with Atletico BP from Bettola near Piacenza. They played in the fourth tier and promotion to the third tier at the end of that season saw them playing professional football for the first time in 95 years, somehow surviving on small crowds. Big brother Piacenza Calcio 1919 (Refounded in 2012) reached Serie A for the first ever time in 1993 under the guidance of Gigi Cagni, and while that stay was short lived, they were back at the top table in 1995, where they remained until 2000. It has been largely a familiar tale of woe ever since, but they are stabilising as a unit in the third tier now.
The Leonardo Garilli stadium (capacity 21,668) is a fantastic stadium, with two really impressive stands on either side of the ground, with steep gradient affording fantastic views of the surrounding area as well as the pitch, albeit with a running track around it! Pro were really put to the sword in this encounter under the floodlights losing 4-0. They did contribute greatly to an entertaining match, but this was a joust for lower positions in the complicated 27 team Serie C play off structure, which Piacenza qualified to be involved in, but didn’t progress very far. It was a similar tale last term, Piacenza went out in the early play off rounds, while Pro Piacenza just did enough to avoid relegation, but with the Serie C Bond to guard against bankruptcy having been significantly increased, Pro are one of a number of clubs that may start 18/19 in the fourth tier as they can’t or won’t pay it. The issue is two fold with the authorities feeling they had to increase the Bond to try and stop another Modena debacle with their mid season bankruptcy, and the FIGC’s constant issues with big clubs like Vicenza and Arezzo whose bad accounting practises saw them suffer big points penalty losses, but both survived. The other aspect of this development is from a personal perspective very sad, with the bigger Serie A “B” teams taking advantage of the situation, and gaps in the league roster will see them filled by these reserve sides. They will be allowed into Serie B too if they achieve promotion, but like in Spain and Portugal etc, no further. With no reserve sides in the German third tier this season they could close that door. The French only allow the reserves to climb to the fourth tier, and thankfully in Britain it hasn’t happened in any capacity, and long may that be the case. Italian club football below the top flight has huge issues every summer, but this twist is not what I had hoped to see!
Football Adventures with James Rendall 