TEN YEARS, EIGHT TROPHIES: THE RISE OF PARMA

A little-known Italian club became one of Europe’s leading lights in the 1990s, boasting a squad packed with cult heroes and future legends. Three decades after Parma lifted their first continental trophy, FFT learns from those involved just how they did it

- Chris Flanagan

Seven games, zero goals scored. By late February in 1990, Parma’s Serie A dream was slipping away. Weeks earlier, the club had been rocked by the death of their long-serving president, Ernesto Ceresini; now, they just couldn’t find the net. Even when they did score twice, against Reggina, a visiting player was struck by a missile thrown from the crowd and their opponents were awarded a 2-0 win.

Over the entirety of their 77-year history, Parma had never competed in the top flight. Eighth in Serie B, after a 1-0 loss to Cosenza, their chances of making it in 1990 looked remote at best. A fortnight later, they lost at Barletta, another relegation-threatened team.

Then the remarkable happened.

Not only did Parma recover to seal the club’s first ever Serie A campaign, but by the end of the decade they had established themselves as one of calcio’s powerhouses and won three European trophies – a tally unsurpassed by any club across the continent during the ’90s. From unlikely origins emerged one of football’s greatest cult teams.

“WHERE ARE WE TRAINING TODAY, GUYS?”

Parma is a provincial city in the north of Italy, with its population of nearly 200,000 people putting it roughly on a par with Colchester or Gateshead. Milan or Turin, it is not. Its football team’s golden era had previously come in the 1950s, when they came ninth in Serie B: Parma stayed in the second tier for 11 straight seasons, then returned to the lower leagues before being liquidated in 1968.