If Ancona’s first nibble at the Serie A top table had been too short, while then manager Vincenzo Guerini brought in some “stranieri” (foreign players), he did largely stay loyal to the squad that took the club to that historic promotion. Weeks on from the invasion of the pitch at Livorno by 8,000 excited Anconetani having celebrated the return to the top league, the gloss was already beginning to fade on this new adventure before it ever got going. Gigi Simoni was lured to Naploi, just as Spalletti had been, and that vital cog of continuity was lost again in the wheel of attempting to survive. Leonardo Menichini took over the reigns, but he lasted merely four games before Nedo Sonetti was asked to pull rabbits from the hat, it was a hopeless situation.
Menichini’s short reign brought one point from 12, a 1-1 draw at home to Modena, Nedo’s first 4 games produced just two points from goalless games at Reggina and at home to Siena. The opponents in these three draws were clubs we really had to beat if we were going to survive, but at the conclusion of the next eight games in early January, one point was all that had been added, a 1-1 with yet another club that needed to be beaten, Brescia. No one was thrashing us as they had occasionally in our first Serie A campaign, but goals were harder to come by this time around, having scored just 7 in 16 games, and 4 of them coming in a pair of two 3-2 losses. It was a sorry state, and if I had thought about going across, by this time I had doubtlessly decided to save my money, as the woes just kept coming. The next 8 games saw three more draws, and with just two more goals scored. You get the picture I am sure, but in the midst of this period that “5-0” score appeared again, thrashed at the San Siro by AC Milan, and Sonetti was gone in late January, like two previous incumbents who fell on their 5-0 sword. His replacement, the third boss of the season, Giovanni Galeone was handed a small bucket to save a sinking ship, his task was mission impossible.
By March 2004 we still hadn’t beaten anyone, and despite scoring 4 times in the next four games, 3-2 and 5-2 losses at Siena and Brescia were painful experiences. With relegation already confirmed perhaps the pressure eased and on the 10th April 2004 we finally won a game, beating Bologna at Del Conero 3-2, but the crowds had dwindled and following another two losses, ahead of one last defiant win, beating and relegating Empoli, 2-1 at Conero on the penultimate round of fixtures, a week later in losing 1-0 at Perugia, barring a miracle, the club had played its last ever game, we were going bust. In a hideous postscript to Ancona Calcio, we had managed just two wins, collecting a mere 13 points and used 46 players in the campaign. Cristian Bucchi with just five goals was the top scorer. My great friend Stefano was across in Scotland in August with his sister and family when that JFK moment arrived. I remember it vividly, we were wandering around Brora when a call from home confirmed everything we feared. No one had come to save the club from merely relegation to Serie B, Ancona were gone completely unless some sort of package for guarantees and FIGC bonds could be put in place. It was a desperately sad moment, 16 years of largely memorable days was gone.
The omnipresence of potential disaster had been in the air since the days of Edoardo Longarini back in Serie A first time around. He was the father figure of the Guerini years, the most popular owner the club has ever had, but it transpired that the success had been a castle built on sand. He was director of a road construction company tasked with building a by-pass around Ancona. A project years behind schedule, and it had just come to light as to why that might have been. Edoardo’s love for the club had led him to siphon off some of the government grants for the road construction and put them into the finances of the club. He was ultimately jailed for his actions, but a more popular figure to be incarcerated you couldn’t imagine. His name will still be held in the highest regard amongst many Ancona fans, he gave us the strength to dream. Incredibly years on, the State is still pursuing him personally for the lost millions. One or two chairman had been running the club in the years following Longarini’s retirement, but the poor administration and finances caught up with the club.
From the embers Ancona Calcio rose AC Ancona, just two weeks before the start of the ‘04/05 season. Special dispensation was granted and the “new” club started on the 26th September with a 2-1 over Cuoiocappiano, who?! A drop of three leagues, we were now in Serie C2, the fourth tier, a million miles away from hosting Juve and Inter. Considering it was a hastily pieced together squad, three wins and two draws to start the campaign was just what was needed, but it was a patchy season, and I guess just having a team and surviving were more important. It was a sad year to celebrate the centenary of football in Ancona, back in the 4th tier for the first time since 1981/82, a promotion that curiously came with a name change away from US Anconitana. Serie C2 had 3 Girone (leagues), so away days were not down in the deep south, more across the country to Tuscany and Lazio. The derbies were with Fano, and the season included “international” football playing the club side from San Marino, who play under that name, as well as trips to the marble towns in north west Tuscany at Carrara and Massa. If the start to the season had been reasonable, the last win was on the 20th March at to Castel San Pietro, followed by 8 losses and just one draw to conclude the season, including a 4-0 mauling at Fano. It was a collapse that killed off the promotion push, ending mid-table 15 points behind promoted Ravenna in second place.
A re-grouping was necessary for the following season, with the league now including such names as Reggiana, Sassuolo (on the way to the top) and great friends SPAL from Ferrara, all from Emilia Romagna, as well as the “central” fourth tier now encompassing Campania, well south of Roma, with Benevento and Cavese also on the roster. The collapse at the end of the previous campaign saw Pierluigi Frosio vacate the hot seat in the summer, his replacement Marco Alessandrini was gone by game 9 of 2005/06, despite just two losses in that period. The ambition was back and they turned to Agostini Iacobelli to get us out of this division. He was of course coming mid-term and while things did improve, this was a very tight league. Remarkably with one point less than the previous campaign moved us up from 11th to 5th, good enough for a playoff berth and a crack at promotion!
In previous play off scenarios, draws were good enough to see Ancona promoted, but Sassuolo had the benefit of the tied aggregate this time and cruelly that was how we failed to go up, despite winning the second leg 1-0 in Sassuolo. A crucial injury-time penalty had given Sassuolo a 3-2 win at Del Conero, and despite giving it everything in the second leg, we were destined for a third season at this level, and we couldn’t halt the progress of a small, ambitious club en route to becoming a regular in Serie A. While this was our first ever playoff loss, albeit on away goals, something nice ended up coming from it, as clubs in the third tier had gone bust and we were “advanced” in the summer to the third division as one of the playoff losers. The rationale behind giving a place to Ancona might also have come from the Italian authorities, the FIGC’s guilt at having relegated us three leagues when we went bust a few years earlier, Napoli for one never experienced such a drop when their time came for the biscuit tin to be lacking Euros, a two league drop became the accepted punishment.
Perhaps the sudden change of course caught the club out. After all, we were assembling a squad for the fourth tier when we got the nod to step up. It wasn’t going to be pretty in ‘06/07! With all my trips to South America, I scheduled a long overdue return to Italy for mid October, an unusual time for me to pitch up. Firstly, a long overdue visit to the Dino Manuzzi to see Cesena, where Papa Weigo scored the only goal in a second tier win over Bari. With no left luggage I had to work hard to get the transport police to take my suitcase while I was at the game. Invariably they had changed shift before I got back, and it took time to track down the necessary chap to get my bags ahead of the train south to Ancona.
The very next day I was back in Del Conero watching Ancona toil against an old foe in Foggia. This was the 7th game of the season and we had accumulated one solitary point from a home 0-0 draw with Juve Stabia. There was almost an inevitability that this game would end with me witnessing my first ever loss at home. It might have ended with a scrappy 0-0, but Foggia got revenge for when we sent them to the fourth tier a few seasons earlier with an 87th minute winner. Incredibly Francesco Monaco lasted as boss for another two months, in which period they had won just three games. A 4-0 thrashing at Marche rivals Sambenedettese was the final straw. Next in line was Marco Baroni, whose 9 games in charge saw one solitary win, and unbelievably not for the first time, Monaco was brought back to finish the job! The club lurched onward, and in the final eight games of the season Ancona won 4, losing the other 4, but crucially the last two victories came in the last two rounds of fixtures beating Samb 3-0 and 4-2 in San Marino, That win allowed us to jump just above them to 3rd bottom in the table, but both clubs went into the “play out” slots knowing they wouldn’t have the favour of a tied aggregate in these forthcoming encounters. Teramo from Abruzzo were Ancona’s opponent, and winning 2-0 at home in the first leg eased tension. A few days later a 2-2 draw brought safety, a fiasco of a season had just been saved from utter ruin at the death.
Meantime, as ‘06/07 rolled around something odd was going on behind the scenes at the club. Suggestions were that a sports charity wing of the Vatican had bought a majority shareholding in the club. The Pope, Benedetto XVI was even presented with an Ancona shirt, and a pennant when he met the squad! Alas someone somewhere got cold feet, and despite some nice global publicity for a few weeks, nothing ever came of this proposal. Incredibly Francesco Monaco was still at the helm, and maybe with justification, as it was game 10 of the season at Crotone before we tasted defeat having won 7 of the previous nine games, the portents were looking good. I had caught one of those games, the second game of the season away at San Giovanni Valdarno south of Firenze, where Sangiovannese were thought to be a soft enough touch for me to see a first ever away win! Alas it wasn’t to be, indeed we needed an 89th minute Rizzato strike to get us a draw 1-1.
Two months later I was back again, this time to see us return to winning ways after that inaugural loss at Crotone. We beat Perugia 2-0 at Conero, courtesy of an injury time goal in both halves! It was good to be back at Ancona amid happier times. This particular trip required a Saturday rethink as Cesena v Lecce had been called off at short notice due to a Lecce coach passing away after an accidental electrocution. I ended up at Mantova v Rimini in the drizzle in the second tier, two clubs who would soon start to feature in Ancona’s story.
The players largely came and went, post Guerini’s era it was difficult for a distant fan like myself to forge any great impression of merry-go-round, but this season a new hero came out of the woodwork, Salvatore Mastronunzio. He scored a double in game three of the season in a 2-0 win at home to Lucchese to set the pattern, and by season’s end he’d scored 18. When a striker can bag a side that number of goals, you have a chance, and that is exactly what happened. His haul took us to second in the league table, but not without a dramatic last day win over Taranto, secured that position at Conero, leapfrogging our opponents. Leading 2-1 our southern visitors were 25 minutes shy of clinching all the advantages in the playoffs, but Fialdini and Albanese scored late to change the order. Mastro hadn’t got amongst the goals that he was saving himself for the playoffs.
Perugia were first up, and we were back in the Umbrian capital, a city where we’d seen off Ascoli to return to Serie B some years earlier. This was not a happy return though and when the home side made it 3-0 just after half-time, what had been a cracking season was about to blow up in our faces. However Monaco’s 07/08 team were made of stronger stuff and they stemmed the Perugini tide with Mastronunzio scored late on to give a glimmer of hope at 3-1. Finishing second gave us the advantage of the tied aggregate and so a 2-0 win or greater was the task in hand as the teams trotted out in Ancona the following week. Mastro broke the deadlock after a quarter of an hour, we were just a goal shy now, and five minutes later the task got a little easier as Perugia were reduced to ten men. Perugia held firm until Umberto Cazzola sent the big crowd into a frenzy, scoring with just 15 minutes left to secure the playoff final.
Having just played Taranto four weeks earlier, we found ourselves going toe to toe once more in the final, as they’d seen off Crotone. The one off final had been jettisoned, with two legs required. The first leg in the south was a cagey affair, but we’d settle for a 0-0 all day long. In the return game, that man Mastronunzio set us on our way back to Serie B with a goal just 9 minutes in, meaning Taranto needed to score two, and when Fialdini scored 12 minutes from time, we were going up. Taranto scored very late to make it 2-1, but by that time no one was caring! In the space of 4 seasons Ancona had once again climbed into the second tier.
Monaco stayed on, gradually making himself accepted and more popular with the fans, but the rhythm of the band of ‘08/09 wasn’t vintage. The team struggled, and had it not been for Mastronunzio’s 19 goals things might have been more calamitous. We were constantly in and around the relegation zone, still picking up the odd win, thumping Rimini 5-0 a notable score, even a great 3-1 win at Empoli was splendid, but we didn’t have enough away day success, losing far too many games narrowly. In October I was back in Italy, this time with my sister and the kids. One day while they enjoyed Venezia, I went through to Vicenza by train, picking my Padovan friend Andrea en route. We watched Ancona pick up a rare point in a game that ended 0-0, one of only two draws on the road all season. The following weekend, having enjoyed Cesena beating Pro Sesto in the third tier as the family toured Bologna, we were off down to Ancona that evening. The following day my niece debuted at Del Conero and enjoyed our 3-1 win over Modena, albeit she didn’t enjoy the constant smell of hash and the pyrotechnic smoke billowing up the Curva Nord from the Ultras. Mastro had bagged a brace in a fine performance securing the win.
The pressure built on the boss, and after just a 2-0 loss at Pisa, with just four games to go, the club took the brave decision to let him go and bring in Walter Savioni. The need for points was pressing, that loss to Pisa had seen them jump above us, we were now third bottom and in an automatic relegation slot. No one would truly know the importance of Mastro’s 93rd minute winner at home to Sassuolo the next week, but it would prove huge, as the following week an own goal gave Triestina the win in Fruilia, and then a stubborn Grosseto, incredibly still dreaming of Serie A, held firm at Conero for a 1-1 draw. The point had come courtesy of a Grosseto own goal, and failure to win killed off their chances of making the Serie A playoffs, but from our perspective, it meant if we won on the last day, we’d avoid automatic relegation and play a “Play Out”, between the 4th and 5th bottom clubs.
Stefano hadn’t gone north to Bergamo for that last day cliffhanger with Albinoleffe, but his friend Claudio had, and I remember calling him minutes after the final whistle amid scenes of incredible joy. Ten years earlier, also in Lombardia, we’d pulled back a 3-0 loss to draw 3-3 but couldn’t find the winner and got relegated. Here in Bergamo, in a game we needed to win, against a team with nothing to play for, they ripped us apart for an hour. When Colacone pulled a goal back for us to make it 2-1 we still had 30 minutes to find two more goals, but just seven minutes later Albinoleffe scored again, 3-1. What happened in that closing 20 minutes will live long in the memory, The Great Escape, eat your heart out! Mastro pulled one back two minutes after Albino’s third, and two minutes later De Falco equalised. Nineteen minutes to find a winner, and after a daft spell of five goals in 13 minutes it took until the very last minute of normal time for Rizzato to score his only goal of the season and set off wild celebrations amid the travelling biancorossi fans.
In finishing fourth bottom, our opponents Rimini had the advantage of any tied score in the battle to avoid the final relegation place. In a tight first leg in Ancona, Rimini drew first blood, but five minutes from the end Mastro scored to level matters. The teams headed up the coast to the famous old beach resort for the return game a week later. Stefano had gone with the fans for this one, after all it was a huge 90 minutes. It was televised on RAI TV meaning I was able to watch and endure too as a tense tussle unfolded. Rimini largely had one plan, sit on what they had and play the percentages game for the draw. Ancona had loads of possession but limited clear cut opportunities, but the Riminese didn’t reckon on the resilience and abilities of Salvatore Mastronunzio, whose last goal of the season came 11 minutes from time to send Rimini down and save us from an immediate drop back in C. What a night!
Lessons weren’t really learnt for the ‘09/10 campaign, but nine points from the first four games, including another win at Albinoleffe was a fine start. Salvioni, the late in the day saviour last season had stayed, and Mastronunzio was still banging in the goals, following up on 18, then 19, with 21 this term! How vital those goals would prove once more as we found ourselves down at the wrong end of the table, but unlike the previous campaign, it was a total collapse that nearly brought disaster.
Torino were back in the second tier, and Cesena had come up, as well as with those old foes Ascoli in the mix. We’d got out of the habit of beating Ascoli, we’d either draw at home and more than likely lose away. However, similar to the Anglo-Italian semi final games a few years earlier, both teams won the away fixture. We drew first blood with a 3-1 win at Ascoli, but at the Battle of Ancona in April all hell broke out! When Cristante equalised in the last minute of normal time, our nine men were playing nine of theirs! Just when we thought we’d saved our unblemished home league record against them, two minutes into injury-time Ascoli won it, ahead of a third red card for us, sparking a bad tempered group re-enactment of a battle scene that brought the ugly proceedings to a halt.
The hurt from that loss put a reasonable season into a tailspin. Having beaten Cesena away, a club on its way to back to back promotions two weeks before the Ascoli debacle, we had 9 games left in the season and the possibility of a playoff to join Cesena were distinct. We never won any of those last nine games picking up a meagre three points from 27. It all boiled down to the very last day to avoid any involvement in that play out at the wrong end again. Mantova’s need was even greater, needing the win and snookers elsewhere to save themselves from relegation. My good friend Alex had met up with me following my visit to Verona to see Hellas v Rimini at the Bentegodi. This was my first game in a stadium that I have grown to love, and here was Rimini in a promotion playoff trying and failing to get back up after we’d relegated them. This one ended 0-0 allowing Hellas to go on to play and beat Pescara en route to the second tier themselves.
Alex and I travelled down to Ancona together, and I am sure he enjoyed the Ancona Curva Nord experience. It was never a dull encounter, with a kindly Mantovan own goal afforded us the lead, but goals 15 minutes before and after the break saw the Lombardian side leading. Mantova, Padova, Triestina and ourselves were all in a scrap to avoid one automatic relegation place, two play out slots and merely one berth offering safety. Mastronunzio did it again, settling nerves and breaking Mantova hearts with the equaliser 20 minutes from time, although results elsewhere weren’t helping them either. They kept striving for the winner, but at the final whistle Mantova were down, and we’d avoided the playout, que muted celebrations.
A couple of footnotes, Lecce the forever yo-yo mob were going up to A once more but in this particular promotion season they won the clubs first ever Serie B title. More importantly, none of us present at Ancona for the Mantova game could have known what would happen next, but both clubs went bust! Having survived in B counted for nothing, but this time a total liquidation of the club. Our fall to the very bottom tier of the Italian regional scene was saved solely by a quiet, unassuming Ancona club, Piano San Lazzaro who decided to basically become us! This resulted in the name Piano and its yellow/blue colour scheme being changed to red and white and the name altered to US Ancona 1905. We had merely fallen four leagues down the structure instead of seven or eight, taking over where Piano left off in the Marche Eccellenza, essentially the sixth tier at the time The new decade would start with a third coming of the club outside the league structure for the first time since 1934/35!
The first season at this level, 2010/11, amid the modest surroundings of the Marche Eccellenza, essentially the regional super league, was a good one. I had always regretted my absence when Ancona were ploughing a furrow in the 4th tier, and this time around I wasn’t going to miss the boat completely and made a trip out in early May 2011. Ancona had already tidied up promotion ahead of clinching the Eccellenza title?! The Italian non-league Cup, the Coppa Italia Dilettani offers the winners the opportunity to step up. It’s a lengthy distraction from league action, starting with a mini group of three, with the winner progressing to another min group of three to reach the last 16 and so on. In the last 16 it needed penalties to get by Tolentino at Civitanova, but aggregate wins over great names (sic) of the Italian game, Grifoponte Torgiano, Pisa Sporting Club and Inveruno took us to Roma for a one off final with Citta di Marino. In beating them on the 6th April, 3-1, a trophy was won, as was promotion, but in clinching the Eccellenza title it allowed runners up Citta di Marino to be elevated as well. In actual fact, the new club did the treble that season, winning the Marche Regional Cup too.
All the smaller Marche clubs would raise their game playing in the “lavish” surroundings of Del Conero, so it wasn’t always guaranteed we’d collect maximum points, as blanket defences were commonplace. I was in the sparsely populated Curva Nord to watch a routine 2-0 win over tiddlers Montegranaro. The day before Stefano and I had ventured north to Cesena for the day to see the local side, my second Italian team host Inter Milan, 21 years on from seeing the same duo clash at the San Siro. It was great to see Cesena back in the top flight, and they really gave Inter a real game, leading until late on, when two Inter strikes broke home hearts, but Stefano as an Inter man was quite chuffed!
The next three seasons were spent in the fifth tier, Interregionale as it is called. In the first of these, we reached the play off stage finishing third, but lost out to Sambenedettese who were way too low in the pecking order as well. An element of magnificent good fortune befell the club in choosing to win the title in 2013/14, as it coincided with an entire level of the Italian game disappearing! So fed up with the cumbersome number of “professional” clubs falling into bankruptcy, the FIGC decided to lose Serie C2. So Ancona actually went directly from Serie D, then the 5th tier to Lega Pro as Serie C was renamed, the third tier! A bit like the struggles some years ago when we’d stepped up a league at short notice, this particular promotion was quite a tricky one. We had gone from playing fifth tier sizeable villages in some cases to sides who had just dropped down from Serie B! The gulf was too much and we struggled all season, finishing bottom of the pile in 14/15. It should have resulted in demotion, but once again the number of clubs going bust above us were considerable and it saved our bacon!
In 2015/16 we’d kind of got the third tier gig and we were nearer the promotion playoffs than the bottom. There was one fixture on the roster that I was desperately keen to see, a game with SPAL. Fan friendships are a largely Italian curiosity, and no one really knows how they start, but some can remain as solid as rock, even if you hardly ever play each other. Ancona’s great two friends are Genoa and more especially SPAL. In April 2016 I was across on a muggy, cloudy afternoon to witness the most amazing love-in between fans that I ever witnessed. Ahead of the game both sets of fans sent “representatives” to meet in the middle of the pitch, huge flags et all, with much handshaking and hugging going on. Meantime, throughout the entire game, both sets of fans would chant the others’ name. Indeed, before the game had kicked off, fans of both clubs had sat down to eat and drink together. This is a wonderful side to the Italian football culture. There was a serious side to the occasion, SPAL could have secured automatic promotion that day with a win if Pisa failed to win, meantime we still had a chance to make the playoffs. It was anything but a friendly, but a competitive game with a friendly edge on the terraces. I doubt the players fully understand these fan friendships. As it was, a missed Ancona penalty prevented us from getting a 2-2 draw, but in winning, SPAL were denied final confirmation of their promotion, but that would come the following week at home to Arezzo.
Football Weekends magazine had come along by this time, and having contributed an inaugural piece on the Faroe Islands, the Ancona v SPAL game formed part of a 4 games in 5 days odyssey that I’d set up through the fixtures. Bologna v Torino, Modena v Perugia and Sassuolo v Sampdoria were all enjoyed in the same trip, but none of them were as exciting as Ancona v SPAL. My only disappointment had been that SPAL had played in a hideous dayglow green away kit, thus denying me my first ever sighting of that jam packed blue and white striped shirt of legend. That particular delight would have to wait until October 2017, by which time the Italian correspondent in me for the magazine had me determined to put as many lovely wee clubs on the map as possible, and it’s still an ongoing project. It rained that day in Ferrara and it denied me the chance to amble around town in my Ancona top hoping to make some new friends with the Spalini ahead of the Serie A encounter with Crotone. Both clubs had climbed up well, and both did what Ancona failed in our Serie A assaults, to stay up!
A year after the SPAL game, I was back in Ancona again, a second game of the day, a first in Italy for me, having watched an afternoon game between Sambenedettese and Lumezzane. This‘16/17 encounter was a win or bust occasion versus Abruzzo boys, Teramo. It was a horrible night football wise, the locals had almost become resigned to our fate of relegation and a late Teramo strike as good as sealed that fate, amid a fury of smoke bombs and flares as the Ultras tried to get it cancelled. It was a loss that did more than seal a relegation back to Serie D, now the fourth tier, Ancona was liquidated again! With no one willing to be neighbourly and usurp us into their club this time, the full effect of the starting up again took us all the way down to the 7th level. It could have been down to the 9th tier, but the Marche regional football authorities deemed the club were too big for some of these small “local” venues. We were placed very kindly in the 7th tier, under the name of US Anconitana.
As with all previous resurrections, the early days were encouraging, with back to back promotions taking us back to the Marche Eccellenza, and at this point Covid called a halt to the world. Mastro was back leading the line too. We were on top of a tight little pack of clubs vying for the solitary promotion place into Serie D. We were almost back to where we’d have gone in 2017 had the club not gone bust. What is decided in concluding 19/20 is still unsure with clubs still hoping they could play out the season even without crowds, lets see.
Stefano as yet hasn’t been along to see the “new” club, and neither have I. However, not just from going through this process of documenting the ups and downs of Ancona through these 32 years of supporting them, it was always on my roster of things to do in the next year or so. There is a guilt within me that the last time they were in the fourth tier, then Serie C2, I missed an opportunity to see a game at that level. South America had ruled my world for a time, and I took my eye off Italy, a little. That error has been rectified now, and while a 4th version of the club is testing the loyalty of any fan, throughout my adult life the city of Ancona and the club have been the one consistent in my life, as my own Scottish club disappeared, and another brand new one appeared. I have now been at three cup finals with my teams, and third time lucky it was when Inverness beat Falkirk to bring the Scottish Cup to the Highlands, allowing that magical “Euro” night in Giurgiu, Romania. Anconitana, Ancona, whatever will find its level again, encouragingly, even in this lockdown period, the board are trying to lure others to get involved and push us back toward the third tier.
Dare we dream of returning to Serie B, where I would be happy if this new passage of promotion adventures were to stop. That is perhaps our level, where we can compete without breaking the bank, but having seen investors and businesses get their fingers burnt with all these financial issues before, goodwill is low in Ancona at present. It will take a lot to see the amazing crowds flock back to Del Conero akin to the days when we hosted Sampdoria in the Coppa Italia, or beating Venezia dramatically, a win that saw us taking 8,000 the next week to Livorno, or the 10,000 who journeyed to Bologna for that historic promotion to Serie A. Memories are always made of the team you support, and even from afar my love for Ancona is unwavering. I can’t wait to go back, after all it’s been eleven years since I saw them win, roll on 2000/21 once it’s safe to travel!
Football Adventures with James Rendall 