Modena has been forced into folding after failing to pay off its debts and will not be allowed to finish the 2017/18 Serie C campaign off.
The Canarini had been declining since being relegated from Serie A in 2003/04 and then Serie B in 2015/16 but the final straw came after they forfeited their last four Serie C Girone B matches against Mestre, AlbinoLeffe, Padova, and Santarcangelo, which resulted in the Emilia-Romagna club being expelled on November 6.
It is a shame that Italian teams keep falling into crises like these but presidents and directors must change the way the clubs are being run these days.
Gone are the days when Italian industrialists could spend billions of Lire or millions of Euros to purchase the best players in the world and now these stars are more like to play in the Spanish Primera Division (La Liga) or the English Premier League.
We need to see Italian clubs invest more wisely and also become more realistic about the targets. There is little point in trying to overachieve if it results in a club going in debt later on.
Clubs such as Fiorentina, Napoli, Parma, and Venezia are just a few of the clubs that have gone bankrupt in the last two decades and they had to reform. Most of those clubs spent an abundance on money on gigantic transfer fees but it hurt them financially in the long term.
Italian clubs need to provide more stability unlike Cagliari, Palermo, and Genoa that have a history of sacking coaches regularly and constantly changing their squads. How can clubs progress up the Serie A table if there is instability on and off the field?
Throughout the 2010s, there have been a number of teams that have climbed from the lower divisions in Italy and have earned promotion to the top flight.
Clubs such as Novara, Sassuolo, Carpi, Frosinone, Crotone, SPAL, and Benevento have shown that it is not necessary to spend vast sums of money and it is better to focus on good scouting and developing youth instead.
Aside from SPAL – who come from Ferrara in the Emilia-Romagna region – and Novara, these teams come from towns with less than 100,000 people so achieving promotion to Serie A is more remarkable for these sides.
The rise of both Carpi and Sassuolo are particularly remarkable because they both come from the province of Modena. The Canarini are now defunct yet their local rivals have been run far more shrewdly and have clear projects.
The biancorossi used to acquire the best young players in the amateur leagues thanks to sporting director Cristiano Giuntoli and they went from playing in Serie D in 2009/10 to playing in Serie A in 2015/16 while the Neroverdi thanks to the financial support of Mapei have become a stable Serie A side and have been keen to prioritise the development of Italian starlets.
Perhaps Modena was lacking that sort of project or those recruitment policies but once the club is reformed, the new owners and directors need to find financial stability and identify talent in better ways.
Sadly the Gialloblu are not the only club to have been run poorly and fold in recent years. Numerous others in Italy have endured this fate and it needs to stop. Dreams cannot be confused with reality and clubs cannot look for quick solutions to reach the top.
Italian football must learn from the expulsion of Modena because incompetent management and poor spending should not be tolerated.
Doria Style 