You might think that after four promotions, a Coppa Italia Cup Final, an Anglo Italian Cup and Coppa Italia C Semi Final, as well as the huge play out relegation dodge avoiding the drop into the fourth tier, things might start to settle down for Ancona. After all, despite three relegations thrown into the mix, it had been a tumultuous 13 seasons since I started cheering il biancorossi, they rarely do dull!
One thing that the 2000/01 return to Serie B did for the club was provide a rare second term in charge for il Mister, as the boss is known in Italy, with Fabio Brini continuing his stint in the hot seat. For the second time in four years the opening game of our B season was against Torino, and if beating them 1-0 at Del Conero was a nice start in 1997, seeing Toro off 2-0 in Turin was laying down a marker, we were back! Game two was at home to Monza, the side who had held out in that epic 3-3 encounter that relegated us in 1998, and they were dispatched 1-0, before coming back down to earth with a 4-1 slapping at Siena. Sampdoria were in Serie B as well, and like the Coppa Italia final six years earlier, the Genoa club left Ancona with a 0-0 draw. The season settled into a pattern, but with the draws now reduced, a haul of 51 points was good enough for 10th place, 18 points away from promotion and 15 from the trap door. I pitched up in Ancona for the very last game of the season, a piece of deadwood against Cittadella, who were also safe, and probably the smallest team in the league that season, so only a handful of fans travelled down from just north of Padova for the 1-1 draw. While Torino went up, the Genoese duo and Cagliari would still be on our roster the following season. Brini still continued to tinker with the team a lot, using 33 players. Christian Vieri’s brother Massimiliano was in the squad and he got 10 goals for the cause, with maverick Petro Parente bagging 15. Albino, Russo and Montervino were still lynch pins of the set up, with Senegalese Diaw Doudou adding his very own cultish, unusual aspects to the play.
Brini was still in charge for the next campaign ‘01/02, and if the previous season had started well, this one set off to an even brisker pace. The hoodoo over Napoli continued when in game two, when Parente and Vieri both struck in the San Paolo for a famous 2-1 win, bringing a 6 points from 2 games start. When a 91st minute goal at Terni gave us the win over Ternana in game 8, we had 15 points with just one narrow loss at Como. What happened in the next ten games was to prove the downfall of Brini, with nine defeats and one solitary narrow 2-1 win over struggling Pistoiese registered. That ugly 5-0 trashing that cost Giorgini his job at Treviso a few years before reared its head again in the 10th game in this hideous run, this time at Empoli. It signalled the end of Fabio Brini’s tenure just two days before Christmas, football can be a cruel mistress right enough.
Enter the fold, one Luciano Spalletti, a young ambitious manager who would go on to have an illustrious career. He started with a home match versus Palermo, and while a 3-3 draw might seem like reasonable progress, having led 3-1 with 20 minutes to go, it felt more like a defeat. Six days later down at Reggio Calabria, a 1-0 defeat to a Serie A bound side, complete with incredibly passionate fans was no disgrace but disappointing. Indeed the bad run just kept going, even Napoli finally broke their duck against us at the 6th time of asking with a 1-0 win at Del Conero. It took until Luciano’s 8th game in charge, albeit having had 4 draws in the mix, to see a win finally registered away to Genoa 2-1 at the start of March, three months after our last win. It is funny how football does this, but having just won at the Luigi Ferrari stadium, the very next week we were back there playing and would you believe it, beating Sampdoria too, handsomely as well 3-0, with Albino getting a brace and Russo also scoring. The relief for Spalletti and the team was palpable, six sensational points from Genoa helped steady the ship and confidence started to flow, as Ternana were sent packing in Ancona the following week 3-1 for the first and only three back to back wins all season. It was also Spalletti’s first home success at the 5th time of asking. Wins and losses wove a pattern through the remaining fixtures but a crucial 10 points haul from the last 4 games including wins against Bari, Empoli, and away at Palermo helped push us into 8th, still 19 points from promotion, but crucially five points from the drop! It had been an incredibly tight campaign, and neither of the Genoa clubs, Napoli or Cagliari were moving from B either. Como had won the title, joined in Serie A by Modena, Reggina and Empoli, a more ragtag quartet of promotees you could hardly imagine!
Spalletti was gone by the start of ‘02/03 with veteran Gigi Simoni brought in to guide us in a rare third term in any league! The big hitters in B just kept getting more complicated with Hellas Verona now in the mix and the fabulously well supported clubs of Livorno and Triestina coming up from the third tier too, both desperate to regain successes of yesteryear, as well as the yo yo boys Lecce, and Ascoli were back up too finally. It really was a Rolls Royce roster of clubs, there wasn’t a tiddler amongst them, it was going to take quite a consistent performance to even stay in the division.
The season got off to a good start with another goal glut at home to Palermo, oddly the team we’d beaten away on the last day of the previous season, improving on that 3-2 success with a 4-2 opening day win, thanks to doubles from Mauricio Ganz and Mattia Graffiedi. Technically the Palermo game had been the third game on the calendar but a delayed start had seen the official opener at home to Hellas Verona moved to early November, which ended 1-1. After the Palermo match the next five games were all drawn, before a Luiso double in Salerno brought a welcome three points, followed up by a Giampero Maini double getting another three points at home to Messina, before that Hellas point. Were Ancona successes only occurring if a player scored two?! The first loss of the campaign came in Trieste in week 11, going down 3-2 to Triestina, a club who were certainly dreaming of a return to Serie A this season. Away days were always where the team struggled, save that win in Salerno the 2002 portion of the season, we had no other wins on the round, and going down away to Ascoli two weeks after Trieste certainly hurt. Marche’s wee team had their revenge for the playoff hurt they’d felt 2 ½ years earlier in Perugia. Despite a disappointing first home loss to Lecce just ahead of the Christmas break, we were in the mid-table. It was still a season that could go either way.
The first game of 2003 was supposed to have been game two of the season, at that favourite hunting ground, the San Paolo, where we left undefeated yet again following a 1-1 draw. The next six games were the pivotal games in the campaign, when a maximum eighteen points were gathered and pushed the season from being reasonable into the realms of possibilities. The notion we needed a double scorer to win games was finally broken too in the first of the six victories, a cracking 4-2 win on the edge of the Venetian lagoon with four separate scorers. Having edged out Livorno at Del Conero 1-0, a similar score line at the Bentegodi versus Hellas was something to treasure, with Ganz grabbing the winner. Less than a month after taking a point in Napoli, they were visiting us and departing Ancona pointless once more with Ganz grabbing a hat trick in a thrilling 3-2 win. Eight games with Napoli, one of the cream of the Italian game, granted they were a bit down on themselves in the early noughties, but with just one loss in all those matches, Napoli must have hated seeing our name on the fixture roster! A second consecutive win at Palermo, this time a dull low scorer 1-0, was followed by a 3-1 home success versus Vicenza brought the winning streak to an end as we failed to return from Terni with anything going down 1-0 in Umbria to Ternana in late February. It was however a mere blip, with three straight home wins interspersed with three away draws and one loss, at Sampdoria, it was still a fine haul of points, promotion was genuinely a possibility.
Next up was the derby with Ascoli, a team in need of points to shore up their return to Serie B, and they came away from Ancona with a point. That set up a serious wobble, with back to back losses experienced for the first time in the season, losing 2-1 in both games at home to Bari, and on the island of Sardinia at Cagliari. These encounters were the prelude to when I had scheduled my trip, hoping my chosen duo of fixtures would finally coincide with a promotion clinching party. However, it wasn’t exactly going to plan, as usual. A welcome three points came our way in a 1-0 home win versus Genoa, the first win in 5 games which helped steady the nerves as I flew into Roma ahead of taking the lengthy but scenic train route down to Lecce deep in Puglia.
The early part of this century was undoubtedly my South American phase, which lasted more or less a decade and saw me accumulate 70 plus games, largely in Argentina and Uruguay with a smattering in Brazil too amid 17 trips across the equator and beyond. I was only two months home from seeing Racing beat Talleres Cordoba when I was off on my travels again, bound for Italy and the distinct possibility of a return to the top tier for Ancona. Lecce is a beautiful city, I thoroughly enjoyed my time there, but sadly it was in the last days before my curmudgeonly old fashioned ways finally togged up to digital, basically meaning I don’t have many good photos of this fantastic town. I have Lecce on my list of places I want to revisit, but next time, a much slower paced cross country adventure, stopping off at Benevento and Matera on the way. That would be quite a trio of stunning Italian towns, vistas and calcio et all!
With three games to go the situation was tight, with only Sampdoria and Siena were out of sight at the top, leaving Lecce, Triestina, Palermo and ourselves scrapping for two promotion slots. The Lecce game was huge, and it had been moved to the Saturday evening slot for TV. Stefano rarely ventures outside Ancona to watch his team, our meeting at Monza remains our only shared away fixture, but his great friend Claudio was on one of the buses speeding down the Adriatic coast and I had arranged to meet him outside the away end. In typical style, the local Polizia had done all they could to annoy the visiting fans, having the buses circle around Lecce on some ring round on a steaming hot evening, rather than let them arrive anywhere near too early. As soon as the bus doors opened at the away end a considerable number of angry fans ran at the police and an ugly battle broke out. I backed away but somehow amid all the chaos I did meet Claudio and we went into the stadium.
Lecce has a lovely stadium, and even in the penned in visitors section you can still get a great view. As you can imagine it was a tense affair, but the unfortunate Maltagiati put through his own goal in the 13th minute and Lecce were in front. Perhaps Simoni had set us up not too loose, playing an overly cautious style, one we failed to break out of until the half time team talk. In the second half we were more adventurous, fighting back well and when Marko Perovic scored seven minutes in, it sent us all into raptures. Lecce were always the more dangerous team but we were holding on relatively comfortably until three minutes from the end when they found the winner. Lecce were on course to do what Lecce largely always do, dot constantly between the top two leagues. There was only one promotion slot available now, and two games to go.
The Lecce tale doesn’t finish at the final whistle, partly as the police wanted revenge for the pre-match fight and we were kept in the stadium for an hour after the game. The resolve of the Ancona Ultras to exact a second revenge had been broken, after all it was after 23,30 and they had a six hour coach journey yet to endure. As the fans were kettled directly into the buses, my issue was trying to plead with the police that I was staying the night in Lecce! Claudio pleaded with a Mad Max, over the top dressed policeman and eventually a gap was created for me to squeeze through. I walked back into Lecce to my hotel and never saw another sole! The next morning as the lift doors opened men in Ancona training tops were in the lift heading down to breakfast. The entire squad were squirreled away in another section of the restaurant having stayed the night in my hotel. A more confident fan would have endeavoured to have made better contact than a few mumbled, badly spoken words of Italian in the lift to the physio, I think it was, about last night’s hard luck story!
A week later, an expectant crowd of 19,000 had gathered at Del Conero for the visit of Venezia, a club desperate for points themselves to avoid the drop. One of the reasons Ancona’s race to promotion had stalled was the lack of goals all of a sudden from Maurizio Ganz, who scored his 12th goal of the season on the 30th March at home to Salernitana, but who could have guessed it would be his last scoring contribution to the cause. The rest of the team needed to step up and in the two games I watched, one man certainly came out of the shadows to double his tally for the season from three to six goals. Mirko Perovic from Rad Beograd became that unlikely hero. His goal at Lecce nearly got us a point, and when he put us in front versus Venezia just before half time, things were looking good. If we had played better at Lecce after the break, here we seemed riddled with nerves, and as Venezia grew in confidence, the crowd got more edgy, no more so than when the Venetians equalised from a penalty eight minutes from the end. Things were now looking slightly complicated, we couldn’t clinch promotion in this game even with the win, but in order to avoid needing a win at Livorno on the last day, a draw was taking the scenario out of our own hands completely, we had to win. Deep into added on time just as everything seemed lost Mirko came good again and sent the stadium into the biggest, most wonderful and chaotic celebration I have ever experienced. The 2-1 win meant a point on the Tuscan coast was all we needed, and with Livorno’s season all but done, no one thought for a minute we wouldn’t get that necessary point.
That symmetrical thing happened again, with Livorno providing the opposition for the first promotion of my Ancona days in ‘88, and once again 15 years later, albeit away this time. Eight thousand made the considerably lengthier trip to Livorno, than to Bologna where they’d celebrated the first promotion to Serie A. The Tuscans had nothing to play for and largely they weren’t going to stand in our way as we traded goals in a 1-1 draw to clinch a sensational promotion. Daniele Diano scored his only goal of the season to give us the lead, cancelled out twenty minutes later by Igor Protti, a famous old name in calcio. Triestina and Palermo had chucked it come the start of the last day, and we ended up three points clear in 4th place. Personally, my delight was tempered by having once again rather frustratingly missed out on the promotion clinching experience, but. I was already nearly out of holidays for 2003 and it was only the start of June!
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and a bit like Gretna’s late goal at Dingwall to send them into the Scottish Premier League, had Perovic not scored late at versus Venezia, might what happened next not have happened for Ancona? We will never fully know, but if the first Serie A campaign had been tricky, the next season would turn out to be largely a fiasco, the first of many. For some reason, clubs tend to over-extend in trying to find the right squad to compete in Serie A, and like Como or Reggina before them, the financial consequences of failure was high. Perovic gave the Ancona fans one final glorious memory, the rest of this memoir is sadly largely tales of woe heaped on tales of woe.
Football Adventures with James Rendall 