Attaching myself to the Ancona cause had been a wonderful thing. In five short years they hadn’t just returned to the second tier for the first time in 37 years, but pushed beyond that previous constraint and nibbled at the top table of Italian football with some of Europe’s greatest club sides. Okay it only lasted a season but some of the moments of getting there and the odd Serie A shock result were memories to cherish. It left you craving more, and the rollercoaster that was supporting Ancona was not about to disappoint.
The year 1993 will always be viewed personally as the worst year of my life. It started badly when my local club Meadowbank Thistle were on the cusp of being hijacked out to Livingston with complete loss of name et all. One March afternoon as fans, friends of mine were being escorted from the stadium before a ball was kicked for chanting against the chairman, my mate Martin and I took one look at each other and walked out. We never went back, Meadowbank in its dying embers was gone for us. Our trip to Italy that late spring became all the poignant, at least we still had teams to cheer! By September, things got worse, having finally convinced my father to go to a game with me for the first time in a decade, as he walked through quiet streets in the Craigleith area of Edinburgh en route to buy tickets for Hearts v Atletico Madrid at Tynecastle, he suffered his third, and ultimately fatal heart attack and died alone in the street with no one around. Not having the chance to say goodbye took a long time to dissipate, but in a way he went out doing what he loved most in his retirement, going for a walk.
Football took a little time to get back on track for me after that, even cheering for Ancona. After all it was almost a classic case of “after the lord mayors show” with second tier football back on the agenda. That said, the whole gang were nearly here, with fixtures for the first time against Cesena, and hostilities renewed with Ascoli. Fiorentina, who had been so cruelly “ganged up on” at the conclusion to the previous season were the big fish to be shot at, as well as Hellas Verona and Vicenza, a provincial side on its way to its own glory days a few years later. There would also be the return of one of the Serie A promotion heroes, Sandro Tovalieri now playing for Bari.
Vincenzo Guerini was still at the helm but three of the four “stranieri” (foreign players) had gone, the Argentine duo of Ruggeri and Zarate had never really worked, but losing Lejos Detari was a pity, as he linked up well with Massimo Agostini in the top flight. Only Milos Glonek the tall Slovak defender remained, an ex-Internationalist who had played for both Czechoslovakia and Slovakia. The nucleus of the team stayed solid, with Nicola Caccia perhaps expected to step up a little in support of Agostini in pursuit of the reti, the goals. Between them they would bag 28 this season, with Il Condor as Agostini was known getting 18.
Serie B is always a tight league, yes one or two stragglers get detached and if you are very good you’ll steal a march on the pack at the top. One team fell into each category in ‘93/94 with the “big fish” Fiorentina smarting from the end of the previous season, injustice was ringing in their eyes that was motivation enough to easily claim top spot for an immediate return to Serie A. Monza were the only real strugglers winning only 5 games, as many as Viola lost. Ancona finished 8th a point behind rivals Ascoli, but whilst they lost to them 1-0 away four games from the end of the season, they had earlier in the campaign preserved their proud home record, beating them 2-0 again just as they had 2 ½ years previous when they last met in Ancona. My other charges Cesena were given a real beating at Conero, with Massimo Agostini, a hero for both clubs scoring but respecting his old team by not celebrating. In the return match in Cesena in April perhaps the pressure was too much for the ex-Cesenati striker as he missed a penalty in a 0-0 draw. Cesena would lose a play off with Padova for a return to Serie A.
If the league form was patchy, the same could not be said for the Coppa Italia. La Coppa is even to this day a totally bizarre competition, and it is true that Italians have no concept of the romance of the cup, as there is no bag for all the balls to be drawn. The whole thing is set up like a tennis ladder with the big boys kept apart as long as possible. It is rare for a club outside the top 8, let alone the top flight to make it to the final, or better still win it. But Ancona, a club with no great cup pedigree went all the way to the final, and if I had missed out on Bologna two years earlier and the promotion party, I wasn’t going to miss out on this experience!
It could have all come unstuck before it really got going down in the small town of Giarre, Sicily, where the third tier outfit forced extra time before Vecchiola and Caccia grabbed the win. In the second round the degree of severity was ramped up with Napoli standing in the way. The curious thing about Napoli is that they failed to beat us in Serie A during the last season, and history was about to repeat itself, with a 0-0 in the San Paolo backed up by a pulsating 3-2 Ancona win back home with Agostini getting a brace and Caccia one as we seemed to be cruising 3-0 before a minor late scare. Getting rid of one of the bigger clubs on the ladder opened up the next two rounds to relatively winnable ties. However it took a last minute Centofanti goal to give us a lead to take to third tier Avellino, and a late penalty in the Campanian town with a 2-2 draw and an aggregate win. Venezia were our quarter-final opponents, a rare all Serie B match up this deep into the competition. Venezia had dished out the biggest defeat to Ancona, 4-0 on the banks of the lagoon in the league, but in early January we shut the door on them with a 0-0, finishing the job with an unanswered Vecchiola double. Ancona were in nosebleed territory now, a cup semi-final, with Serie A‘s Torino next in line. Two tight matches would be settled by one solitary goal in the first leg scored by that man Agostini. The goalless second leg in late February, followed by a few days of sorting out dates for the final meant I didn’t have a whole heap of time to get my travel arrangements nailed down, but as Ancona and Sampdoria took to the field at a jam packed Stadio Del Conero for the first leg, I was there.
Such was the enthusiasm for the occasion, thousands were outside long before the gates had even opened and as the numbers grew behind us it was the first and only time in my football life that I began to feel a little uncomfortable as the potential for a real crush was high. Eventually commonsense prevailed and the gates of Curva Sud were opened, allowing a crowd in high spirits and full of anticipation to sweep in long before the game. Sampdoria were a team of stars, Gianluca Pagliuca was the goalkeeper, the defence was marshalled by Pietro Vierchowod, with a midfield including Attilo Lombardo, Ruud Gullit and David Platt. Up front was a local Marche boy made good, Roberto Mancini from nearby Jesi. It was very much a rearguard action by Ancona, whether nerves played a part, but Nista in goal was imperious throughout, and nearer the end Centofanti stung the fingertips of Pagliuca twice, but it remained 0-0 at the finish.
Two weeks later in Genoa the teams re-commenced hostilities with Sampdoria now even more heavily favourites. That said in five matches against Serie A teams in the competition to this point Ancona hadn’t lost, scoring 4 and only conceding two consolation goals to Napoli. If only this level of consistency had been more prevalent last season in the top flight, things might have worked out differently. While I was home, remarkably my mate Martin discovered his Sky TV channels had Rai Uno and we could watch the second leg live on TV. In the first half Ancona were giving as good as they got, the shock win was still on, and I was dreaming of watching them in the Cup Winners Cup. An unfortunate own goal five minutes into the second period by Vecchiola put Samp in front, and when Lombardo doubled the lead 8 minutes later the dream was fading. While Lupo pulled one back to make it 3-1 with 18 minutes to go, we had merely poked the bear and minutes later I was torn between hiding behind the couch or switching off as Sampdoria just continued to rub salt on salt into the wound. At the final whistle Samp had thumped us 6,1 in 40 minutes of football, exposing that lingering underbelly of roof collapse that had seen us concede 73 in Serie A last term. No one could deny Sampdoria weren’t worthy winners, but having kept it tight for 140 minutes of the tie before conceding, the final score seemed harsh.
In the close season, the journeyman boss Vincenzo Guerini who had parked his coaching bus in Ancona for five years was lured to bigger things and the call of Napoli was ultimately too great. No one could deny him a chance to prove himself at one of Serie A’s leading sides, and he left Ancona a hero having given the fans the best days of our lives. Sadly Vincenzo didn’t even last the season at the San Paolo, heading to Ferrara and SPAL after being sacked at Napoli. During his career he managed at sixteen different clubs, returning to the hot seat at Catanzaro, and Fiorentina, his last two posts in 2006 and 2012, both lasted merely a matter of months and were six years apart. Following his caretaker role in Florence he retired out of the game just shy of his sixtieth birthday. He never managed more than two seasons at any other club, and he never achieved the same success as he did at Ancona. Vincenzo should be given the freedom of Ancona, the man was a legend.
How do you follow a five season legacy of largely wonderful success for such a provincial club. The honest answer is, no one ever fitted the mould, and his immediate replacement Attilo Perotti didn’t even last a full season, but despite the change of boss a sixth place finish in the second tier wasn’t bad at all. The 1994/95 season had seen Ancona joined by Cesena and Como, both my other clubs, as well as those derbies with Ascoli. We did the double over Como, who went down, and traded wins with Cesena, but despite not beating Ascoli, a 95th home equaliser at Conero preserved the home unbeaten gig, and the piece de resistance, Ascoli went down too! This particular season started a passage of absence for me, caused by a combination of factors, but the loss of Guerini just seemed to herald the end of an era. Ancona would always be my team, but after the incredible recent period, it just all fell a little flat, a feeling doubtlessly still lingering in me following my father’s death. The Coppa Italia run had allowed true escapism, as did the arrival of Caledonian Thistle. A merged, essentially new club from the Highlands, an area dear to me meant the 18 months of nomadic viewing in Scotland was over. All those treks up the A9 probably started to eat into free funds to travel, plus I was saving to head to Mexico and Guatemala.
Despite my four year hiatus, I was still getting my Ancona fix as the club’s three entries into the Anglo-Italiano Torneo fitted into my absence from Italy largely. I did the programme notes for all six games they played in England, but only ventured south for half of them, one per season. In the Coppa Italia season 1993/94 we debuted in the competition at Burnden Park, Bolton where I witnessed my worst mauling, a desperate 5-0 loss. Two points from the 4 games was a poor return, but then Ancona had more important cup ties that year. The following season I was invited behind the scenes at Bramall Lane, where I was up on the TV gantry and met Tony Currie ahead of a cracking 3-3 with Sheffield United. Winning at home to Derby and Middlesborough and drawing at Stoke too saw us through to the Italian Semi-Final, against Ascoli would you believe! This competition was always muted to be rarely taken seriously by the Italian sides unless they made the final, but a semi-final versus your greatest rivals, that was one way to spice things up. An odd thing happened too, neither side had ever lost at home to the other, but that record went out the window at both venues! We won the first leg 1-0 at Ascoli, and a similar score for the visitors at Ancona forced extra-time. A second Ascoli goal ten minutes from the end killed the dream of going to Wembley to see Ancona take on Notts County. Instead the battle of the black and white striped kits saw the trophy go to Nottingham. The following season would be the last ever edition of the competition, and despite starting well with a 1-0 win at home to Oldham, three losses including a 2-0 defeat with me in attendance at Vale Park was the calm before the storm with a nasty bust up with Birmingham players in Ancona, and another absolute tanking by the Hatters in Luton, a sad way to bring the curtain down.
That bust up with Birmingham might have been a legacy of passions from a tough season boiling over. Eight years after celebrating a first promotion to the second tier that dreaded drop back to the third tier was here. A wretched 14 games without a win from early February to late May ‘96 saw a reasonable start to the campaign come crashing down, and in the final analysis, despite 20 goals from Artistico, ironically the highest tally by an Ancona player in the last decade, we were 4 points shy of safety and going down.
Third tier life saw Ancona in the southern regional division with Trapani and Acireale from Sicily on the roster, as well as more local foes, Fermana a new Marche rivalry and that old chestnut Ascoli! Local pride was Ancona’s drawing three of the four derbies and beating Fermana 2-0, a rivalry that would in time become more feisty. There was the added distraction of significant progress in the Coppa Italia C, where Marche upstarts Maceratese, then Carrarese and Triestina were all beaten over two legs to take the club into a semi-final with Nocerina. A 1-0 loss in the first leg didn’t seem to be too calamitous, but despite an early own goal cancelling out the Campanian clubs lead, a second half equaliser sent Nocerina into the final. The 1996/97 season saw the innovation of play offs for promotion and relegation introduced in Italy, and whereas ordinarily finishing second would have sent us directly back to B, in this new world, a two legged semi-final with Giulanova needed to be negotiated, 3-2 on aggregate, before a one off final. A reasonable crowd of 22,000 turned up at the Olympic Stadium, Roma for the final with Savoia from Torre Annunziata, where a Tentoni goal twenty minutes from time clinched an immediate return to the second tier. It is odd to note that the winning goal in the final was only Tentoni’s 7th of the season, and he was the top scorer!
With the club back in B it coincided with my plans to get across and finally get my calcio fix once more. However life back in the second tier hadn’t been going well throughout the 1997/98 campaign. The shifting of the sands to three points for a win was something Ancona were struggling with, as they continued to be dogged by too many draws. Brini chose not to continue in the role as head coach following the promotion party in Roma, so Francesco Giorgini took the helm. Things started brilliantly too, with 7 points from the first three games including home wins over more illustrious opponents, Torino and Genoa, the latter a 4,3 classic complete with an injury time winner for Ancona by Martinetti. But the draws kept piling up, and failure to beat struggling Castel di Sangro in either fixture certainly didn’t help. Little Castel di Sangro are forever immortalised in Jo McGinniss’s book “The Miracle of Castel di Sangro”, tales of better days than this miserable campaign, when they waved goodbye to Serie B for the last time.
Things reached a head in late March when il biancorossi went down 5-0 at Treviso and Giorgini was sacked. A cool experienced head was needed, and Franco Scoglio came in to stave off the threat of relegation. His tenure lasted a mere four games, with another couple of draws the sum total of his contribution to what was becoming an angst ridden campaign. Incredibly the club went back to Giorgini to get the job done, and in part the players responded as they didn’t lose any of the final seven games of the season, but with five of them draws, a familiar pattern couldn’t be broken.
I flew into Milan and journeyed a little north to Monza in anticipation of seeing Ancona again in Italy after a four year hiatus. Monza were scrapping for survival too, but our need was more urgent and the three points was the only outcome that would keep us up. Ancona were going to have to do something that they’d failed to do in my previous five away days and win. Stefano and his chums had driven the lengthy trail north from Ancona for the occasion, and old friends were reunited in one cause to help steer us towards safety. It started well, Flachi putting us ahead, but by half time the second leakiest defence in B had shipped three and we were staring into the abyss. A much improved second half saw Flachi bag a second to half the deficit, and with more than half an hour to go this was not a lost cause. Despite numerous near things at either end, a penalty two minutes from time for Flachi to complete a hat trick was the sum of our parts, and despite a brave showing the 3-3 draw was not enough, we were going down. As the players took conciliatory applause the heavens opened and we all scampered for cover under the away curva. A miserable end to an exciting, if ultimately fruitless attempt for survival. The damage hadn’t happened in Monza, but in the months before. Who knows if the board had held its nerve following the Treviso debacle things might have worked out more favourably, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.
The following week, in a dead game for Ancona, I was back at Del Conero for the second time, but with the stadium now complete,I was amongst the faithful in the new end, the Curva Nord was back! Subsequent to this joust with Cagliari, the visiting fans are housed in the Curva Sud at the opposite end of the pitch. However the Cagliari fans were in a corner pen not too far from the home Curva, and with the Sardinians still looking for points to get promotion, they didn’t take too kindly to the 4-1 thumping they endured and stuff was sailing across the divide as tensions rose. The way Ancona played that day only added to the “what if” feeling, two more wins from the 16 draws would have been enough to stay up. However, having conceded 61 goals, only beaten by Castel di Sangro’s 64, over the course of a season a league table rarely lies, unless of course it’s a Covid halted table in Scotland where teams can still get relegated having played less games!
Starting again in the third tier was frustrating, but only by virtue of the expectation levels having been raised in the Guerini years. After all, the third, or indeed the fourth tier were historically where Ancona would plough quiet furrows. The 98/99 campaign did nothing to arrest the seemingly self destructive nature of the last few seasons. There would be no immediate bounce back, indeed the jaws of a second relegation were open, it was a season for holding one’s nerve. Roberto Clagluna was the man tasked with arresting the fall, and while results were patchy, beating Ascoli, who seemed permanently marooned in C, with a 2-1 score at Conero, was one way to please the fans and gave the boss some more time to get things right. Alas failure to beat lesser lights like Guilanova, Marsala and Gualdo Tadino in any fixture home or away started to ramp up the pressure, but then they’d thump Foggia 4-2 at home and score another four at Atletico Catania, there was just no consistency. Clagluna survived the chop despite losing at home to Lodigiani and then at Ascoli Piceno in the derby, but it was the second round of fixtures against the trio mentioned above that brought just two points and the axe was wielded.
Ahead of a vital game at Foggia, just four games from the end of the regular season Buno Giordano was brought into the hot seat. He had been a player of some repute, but he had no managerial pedigree, it was a risk, and they just about got away with it. Despite a penultimate day thrashing at Nocera Inferiore we finished fifth bottom. In most leagues that would be enough for survival, but in the modern world of Italian football, to make it all the more exciting, play outs are required. So fifth bottom Ancona played second bottom Foggia, a team who came down with us from B, one was going to suffer the pain of a double drop. Ancona would have the advantage of safety should the aggregate score be level, a very good rule in the Italian game, taking away the lottery of the penalty shoot out to decide a season. The ties had added spice in that Fabio Brini, the man who’d taken Ancona up to B a couple of years before was in the opposite dugout. Two weeks after the end of the regular season Foggia scored the only goal of the first leg to come north to Ancona with a slender lead. Tensions were running high at Conero, and Giordano was sent from the dugout midway through a scoreless first half. A Foggia defender was next to go halfway through the second period, merely encouraging Foggia to dig in even more, but finally the deadlock was broken 11 minutes from time when Christian La Grotteria scored for Ancona. Foggia needed to score, but seconds later they were down to nine men allowing il biancorossi to see out the clock and celebrate with relief at the end. We’d dodged one very big bullet.
We are now in the realms of my tenth anniversary of seeing Ancona for the first time, an occasion I couldn’t allow to just pass me by, and two years on from my last trip I was back, very near the season’s end as usual. The millenium straddling season of 99/00 will live long in the memory of Ancona fans, if only for what happened right at the end! Giordano didn’t hang around after having kept us up, so the board turned to Fabio Brini once more asking him to work his magic and get us going in the right direction again. Goals were hard to come by all season, we would score just 50 in 34 games, but while the draws were still high, we had become hard to beat, and we only lost six games. These vital stats suggest we were challenging at the right end of the table, and when I turned up in Roma in late April we were desperately trying to catch Crotone for the one automatic promotion slot. The Stadio Flamini, once the home of Italian rugby, was also the home ground for Lodigiani. If last season they had shown our weaknesses in a 3.2 win at Ancona, earlier in this campaign, six of our fifty goals had come against Lodigiani, in the biggest win I recollect Ancona ever having in my time as a fan.
A warm Roman afternoon greeted the teams, but my cursed luck with Ancona away reared its head once more and a late home strike killed off any chance of us catching Crotone, despite knowing we were playing them in the last fixture. All Brini could do was keep the spirit and momentum high, and the following week I was back on the Curva Nord cheering with the rest of the faithful as we came from behind to score either side of half time for a 2,1 win against a Catania side whose own play off hopes died that day. The final table would see us finish second, seven points behind Crotone but crucially we’d have the advantage once more of a tied aggregate. Having negotiated the playoffs successfully before, Brini was doubtlessly confident in repeating the trick, and having gained steel from the jarring experience of the bottom end play out last season, could Ancona use these matches for a third successful delve into the playoffs?
Arezzo had finished fifth and they hosted us in late May where a very kindly own goal saw us leave the beautiful Tuscan town with a draw. The following week, it was Arezzo who scored first ten minutes into the second half, but just three minutes later Corallo had us level, followed by a red card for Arezzo which made their task of finding a second goal all the harder. Terrevoli put Ancona in front with twenty minutes to go, and attention started to turn to the Play Off Final, against Ascoli! This was the mother of all Marche derbies, with Perugia in Umbria chosen as the host city for this memorable occasion. I have long wished to go and see a game in Perugia, it is a magnificent city, and save for Covid-19, that plan would have already been enacted in March.
I am sure you can imagine that both sets of fans were keyed up for this one. If my 1991 experience of this derby was anything to go, the volume and expectation levels were ramped up even higher for this all or nothing encounter. The league games had produced two close fought scoring draws, but Ancona had stolen a march by winning at Ascoli Piceno 1-0 in the Coppa Italia C en route to Quarter Final penalty heartbreak to Gualdo Tadino. After 90 minutes it was still goalless, but the rules stated an extra period had to be played, and if still level Ancona would be promoted. Four minutes from the end of the first period of extra time, Roberto Baggio’s brother Eddy volleyed home a cracking strike for Ascoli to break the deadlock from a corner, bedlam ensued at the Ascolani end. Despite being an ex-Ancona player Eddy celebrated wildly, but given the circumstances no one could blame him. As the clock wound down, an ill tempered game boiled over, when Ancona were denied a penalty as the flag was up for offside, young Christian La Grotteria, the man who’d saved fourth tier football the season before, took his protests too far and was shown a red card, just three minutes from the end. He fell to the ground in despair, you could feel he’d dealt the situation a near fatal blow, but Ancona were constantly on the attack, thwarted largely by time wasting tactics. However, when the ball broke to the edge of the box, Mirco Ventura cracked a low left foot shot into the far right corner of the goal beyond the despairing dive of the keeper, we were level! At final whistle Ancona were back in Serie B and had done so at the expense of their now perennial third tier rivals! The fans invaded the pitch and the police had their work cut out to stop them getting across the field to provoke the Ascolani. As it was, Perugia became what Wembley used to be for the Scots, and in similar fashion they climbed on the crossbar and brought the goals down! What a way to start the new millenium, a new and exciting passage in the history of Ancona Calcio had just begun.
Throughout this period in the clubs history, aside from the last promotion season, managerial stability had been missing. As mentioned in part one Vincenzo Guerini’s success was built on keeping the nucleus of a squad together, but after his departure the wholesale changes meant it was always ripping it up and starting again. Players rarely stayed long enough to grow that cult status of the likes of Gadda, Ermini and Fontana. Nicolo Caccia stayed one season after Agostini moved on, and got 14 goals for the cause. Long haired midfielder Felice Centofanti and Gianluca De Angelis also stayed one more season, contributing 12 goals between them. Bit part players Carlo Cornacchia and Edoardo Artistico then took on more central roles the year after, but Artistico’s impressive 20 goal haul of 42 for the club couldn’t keep us up. And so it continued, players would stay a season or two, no more and move on, and if ever there was a statement as to how excessive tinkering doesn’t work, the season we just avoided the 4th tier, 32 players were used, whereas in the Guerini years you’d be lucky if he used 20. Remarkably in the 99/00 promotion success Brini still didn’t know what his winning team looked like, using 30 players. A young star in the making, goalkeeper Marco Storari was the only one played in every game, a lad who would go on to have a fine high level career, but not before he stayed around Ancona for a good while longer.
Football Adventures with James Rendall 