
In 1999 a young Parma squad won the UEFA Cup which boasted one of the most exciting and young teams Italian football has seen in a long time. Starting with a young Buffon in goal, Lilian Thuram and Fabio Cannavaro in defence alongside the experience of Roberto Sensini who was the captain. Infront of the defence you then had Dino Baddio and Alain Boghossian. Down the wings were Diefo Fuser down the right and Paolo Vanoli with Jaun Sebastian Veron through the middle. Up top there was Hernan Crespo and Enrico Chiesa to bang in the goals.
Stefano Fiore, Fautino Asprilla and Abel Balbo also came off the bench as well in the final 20 minutes. Whats impressive about this is that every member of the squad who got game time in this final all made international appearances before they finished their career. Also what was impressive was that this was manager Alberto Malesani's first season in charge after taking over from former player Carlo Ancelotti.
Over the next few years the team was picked apart though before being declared insolvent in 2004. The club was reborn before being declared bankrupt in 2015. In July 2015 the club was reborn in its current reincarnation of Parma Calcio 1913 where it had to start again by joining the Serie D and working its way back up through the leagues. They got successful promotions and worked back to Serie A with back to back promotions. The hard work all starts now though as we try and get the team back to where they were 20 years ago ad its going to involve rebuilding the team and trying to stop the current Italian method of loads of loan players coming in. We will want to build a young and exciting team that the fans will want to come and see and hopefully take the league from Juventus.
The club are still playing at Stadio Ennio Tardini which has a capacity of 22,352. With the plan that we have in mind then we will hopefully be able to expand on this as we go and hopefully even build a new stadium.