Today Nevio Scala is Chairman of a Serie D club playing the likes of Mezzolara before a crowd of under a thousand but twenty years ago the same Nevio Scala was manager of the same club and together they conquered Europe. The intervening two decades have not been kind on Parma. The 1995 Uefa cup followed repeat visits to the Cup Winners Cup Final (1 win, 1 loss) and a squad that boasted world stars vied with Juventus, Milan and Inter for lo Scuddetto. They never quite won the league but there was another Uefa Cup in 1999 before the club's financial backer - local dairy group, Parmalat, were found to have played the financial derivatives market, lost and cooked the books. The club went into special administration in 2004 and though it narrowly avoided relegation, the glory days were gone. Just as the club under Donadoni seemed to be finding its feet once more - finishing 6th in 2014 - the financial floor once again gave way and this time the club went under.
Football clubs are like comic book heroes: they never stay dead for long. Parma was reborn at the bottom of the Italian football pyramid and have already begun the long climb back up. Scala's return as figurehead is a nice reminder of what the club was once capable of and one day might return to. He first took charge of the side in 1989 when they were an anonymous provincial club that yo-yo'd between Serie B and Serie C. Scala took them up and up. They finished 6th in their first season in Serie A, won the Coppa Italia the following year and the Uefa Cup Winners Cup the next. What a side they were. Three solid center backs in captain Lorenzo Minotti, Luigi Apolloni (both now involved with the phoenix club) and the disco-haired Portuguese Fernando Couto. Width came from attacking fullbacks Bennarivo, Di Chiara and Roberto Mussi while the center of the pitch was patrolled by Dino Baggio. The Guardian recently did a good piece on Baggio. An all-time great with the misfortune of sharing a surname with another all-time great. http://www.theguardian.com/football/these-football-times/2015/jan/21/remembering-dino-roberto-baggio-italy-juventus-torino
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Remembering Dino, the other Baggio
Sharing a surname with the best player of his generation meant that Dino Baggio was forever living in someone else’s shadow, but the former Torino, Juventus and Par...
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It's worth also remembering that Baggio's signing in the summer after the 1994 world cup was a close run thing for both Juventus and Parma. As the deal seemed dead, Parma turned their attention to a young Alex Del Pierro instead and got as far as agreeing the move and submitting the paperwork before Baggio had a change of heart and joined the crociati instead. Baggio is the gold standard for box-to-box midfielder. It was his goals - one in each leg - that won the Uefa Cup final against his old club in 1995 (the second of three Uefa Cups he would win).
Ahead of Baggio, Parma's attack featured the cultured brilliance of Gianfranco Zola (before he took his magic to Chelsea), the blonde effervescence of Thomas Brolin (before his got fat in England) and the explosive genius of Tino Asprilla (before he got deified in Newcastle). As well as these there were plenty of unsung heroes in the side. Massimo Crippa, Roberto Sensini, Marco Branca and Gabriele Pin were all talented players. They didn't win too many games 5-0 (actually they didn't win any - a single 4-0 result being their biggest win of the season) but with that water tight defense they didn't have to. They were a python that smothered their opponent to death - a classic 1990s Italian side in other words.
Their opponents in this first round are Monaco. I admit I wanted to get a Monaco side into the competition but struggled to choose between three. 1994's Monaco had Klinsmann, Schifo and made the European Cup semi final. Ten years later they made the final (rather improbably) with Morientes the star. But both of those sides could only manage 3rd place domestically - their cup runs papering over some large cracks. So instead I chose the 1999-2000 side.
In 1999-2000, Monaco won the league (they have not won it since). Their Uefa Cup campaign was something of a disappointment (they couldn't recover from a disastrous night in Mallorca when at 1-1 Marquez gave away a penalty and was sent off) but the side featured a number of French stars (Barthez, Sagnol, Giuly, Trezeguet), the wily veteran Marco Simone, the mercurial Argentinian Marcello Gallardo and the aforementioned Mexican Rafael Marquez. Like Parma though, financial issues undermined the squad. Stars were sold, they were relegated and then reprieved in 2003 for financial issues which would hamstring the club (that unlikely 2004 cup run aside) until Russian billionaire Dmitriy Rybolovlev took them on in 2011. This is a what-might-have-been side if ever there was one.
It promises to be a fascinating contest. Monaco's attacking brilliance against that tight Parma defense, Asprilla vs Marquez, Baggio & Sensini vs Gallardo & Costinha.
Parma Monaco
GK Bucci GK Barthez
LB Di Chiara LB Sagnol
CB Apolloni CB Djetou
CB Minotti CB Marquez
CB Couto RB Riise
RB Benarrivo LM Lamouchi
MF Pin DM Costinha
MF D Baggio RM Giuly
MF Sensini AM Gallardo
ST Zola ST Simone
ST Asprilla ST Trezeguet
Subs Subs
Brolin, Branca, Crippa, Mussi, Galli, Fiore Contreras, Eloi, Christanval, Prso, Rodriguez,
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