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Castel di Sangro Calcio (recently renamed Pro Castel Di Sangro) was a football club from Castel di Sangro in the Province of L'Aquila in the Abruzzo region of Italy. Their moment of greatness came in 1996, when they were promoted to Serie B, a noteworthy accomplishment for a team coming from a town of only 5,500 residents. Even greater, they were able to survive in that league another year. The story of their first season in Serie B is chronicled in the book The Miracle of Castel di Sangro by Joe McGinniss[1]. The team played at the 7,220 seat Teofilo Patini stadium in Castel di Sangro. The team's colours were red and yellow. Football (soccer) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ...
Castel di Sangro is a city of 5. ...
Aquila (It. ...
Abruzzo is a region of Italy bordering Marche to the north, Lazio to the west and south-west, Molise to the south-east and the Adriatic Sea to the east. ...
Serie B is the name of the second highest football league in Italy. ...
Joe McGinniss (born 1942) is an author of several books; most notably The Selling of the President, an account of the United States presidential election, 1968. ...
History
Beginnings The village of Castel di Sangro had suffered great damage during World War II. At the end of the war, a priest named Don Arbete organized a football team to help rebuild the community. Materials were scarce, so the players used a ball of socks tied with twine. They won their first match against a neighboring town, thus setting the bar high as far as expectations went. A formal team was organized by 1953, joining the lowest of all leagues in Italy, Terza Categoria (third category). Combatants Allied powers: China France Great Britain Soviet Union United States and others Axis powers: Germany Italy Japan and others Commanders Chiang Kai-shek Charles de Gaulle Winston Churchill Joseph Stalin Franklin Roosevelt Adolf Hitler Benito Mussolini Hideki TÅjÅ Casualties Military dead: 17,000,000 Civilian dead: 33,000...
It took them thirty years to earn a promotion to Seconda Categoria, but they did so in 1983, but the jump up a league meant they needed money for league fees, player stipends, and better equipment, and they had none. Their savior came in the form of Pietro Rezza, a southerner from the region of Puglia who married into one of the town's wealthiest families and left the operation of the team to his niece's husband, Gabriele Gravina. Year 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday (link displays the 1983 Gregorian calendar). ...
Apulia is a region of Italy (called Puglia in Italian), bordering on Molise to the north-west, Campania to the south-west, Basilicata to the south, the Adriatic Sea to the east and the Ionian Sea to the south-east. ...
Their second promotion to Prima Categoria came a scant two years later. At this point, it no longer was possible to remain competitive by fielding a team composed solely of local talent and although they were still not professional, Gravina "hired" players from out of town to work in local jobs and play for the team. As such, they quickly moved up the ranks, and by 1989 they reached the professional ranks of Serie C2. Year 1989 (MCMLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Sunday (link displays 1989 Gregorian calendar). ...
 Stadium "Teofilo Patini", home grounds for Pro Castel di Sangro Calcio [2] Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 477 pixel Image in higher resolution (2000 × 1192 pixel, file size: 380 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Castel di Sangro...
Image File history File links Size of this preview: 800 × 477 pixel Image in higher resolution (2000 × 1192 pixel, file size: 380 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) File links The following pages on the English Wikipedia link to this file (pages on other projects are not listed): Castel di Sangro...
1993–1996 At this point, the road to success became a little bumpy, and they struggled to stay in C2. One-third of the way through the 1993–94, things were looking bad and they were facing relegation. Gravina brought in manager Osvaldo Jaconi, who worked a minor miracle by leading the team to a seventh-place finish. The next season, he astonished again by taking them to Serie C1.
The difference between C1 and C2 is vast. C2 may be professional, but it is barely so, and the teams are generally from small towns. Still, it was mind-boggling that a team from tiny Castel di Sangro deep in the hinterlands of the Abruzzo not only made it there but lasted seven years. For them to get to C1 was inconceivable, for C1 contained truly professional teams, some of whom had even been in Serie A at one point (Ascoli had been there in 1990, and Lecce in 1993; both would later return to Serie A, and Ascoli now plays there). Ascoli Calcio is a football club based in Ascoli Piceno, Italy. ...
Unione Sportiva Lecce is a football club based in Lecce, Apulia. ...
Naturally, expectations were low. Simply staying in C1 itself would have been quite an accomplishment, but Jaconi outperformed far beyond that; that season they finished second, meaning they qualified for the playoffs to determine promotion to Serie B. Their first playoff was a two-legged match against nearby Gualdo. They lost the first match 1–0 on the road. At home, it looked as if the match would end in a scoreless tie (meaning that Castel di Sangro would lose on the aggregate score), when Jaconi made a seemingly bizarre substitution. With only fifteen seconds or so left, he sent in a defender who had played in only seven games the entire season. His maneuver worked to perfection: He scored seven seconds after that. Castel di Sangro thus advanced, having finished higher in the standings than fifth-place Gualdo.
The second playoff was a single match against Ascoli, to whom they had lost twice during the season. Ninety minutes went by without a goal, then thirty minutes more of overtime, still without a score, and it was up to a penalty shootout to decide the victor. One minute before the end of overtime, Jaconi had made another inexplicable substitution: He sent in Pietro Spinosa, a goalkeeper who had not played a single minute that season. As the shootout progressed, neither side missed, until the eighth round, when Spinosa made a seemingly impossible save, securing the victory — and promotion — for his team. This was the "Miracle of Castel di Sangro". Penalty shootouts (officially referred to as kicks from the penalty mark) are a method sometimes used to decide which team progresses to the next stage of a tournament (or wins the tournament) following a draw in a game of association football. ...
1996/97 season The team's first season in Serie B was, in a nutshell, tumultuous.
Having been in the lower leagues, the team was forced to upgrade their stadium in accordance with Serie B regulations, and as construction hadn't finished by the beginning of the season, they played their first several home matches in nearby Chieti. After months of delays, when it finally did open in December, the severe winter weather made the pitch unplayable, causing their first fixture there to be called off. Later that month two of their star players, Danilo di Vincenzo and Pippo Biondi, died in a car crash. Chieti is a city in central Italy, 200 km northeast of Rome. ...
At the beginning of 1997, another player, Gigi Prete, was arrested for drug dealing. His wife had been caught smuggling in cocaine from Chile. Gravina, was also arrested in conjunction. All charges were eventually dropped. A skirmish with smugglers from Finland at the Russian border, 1853, by Vasily Hudiakov. ...
Cocaine is a crystalline tropane alkaloid that is obtained from the leaves of the coca plant. ...
It looked like they were going to get some help in the form of Joseph Addo, who had just left FSV Frankfurt of the German Bundesliga. He was also captain of the Ghana national football team, which had made the semifinals in the 1996 Summer Olympics. However, Jaconi refused to sign the contract and Addo went on to Sparta Rotterdam of the Eredivisie. Joe Addo (born September 21, 1971 in Accra) is a former Ghanaian football (soccer) defender, and one-time captain of the Ghana national team. ...
FSV Frankfurt is a German football club based in the Bornheim district of Frankfurt, Hesse and founded in 1899. ...
The official Bundesliga logo. ...
First international Gold Coast 1-0 Nigeria (Accra, Ghana; 28 May 1950) Ghana 7-0 Nigeria (Accra, Ghana; 1 June 1955) Biggest win Malawi 0-12 Ghana (Malawi; 15 October 1962) Biggest defeat Brazil 8-2 Ghana (São José do Rio Preto, Brazil; 27 March 1996) World Cup Appearances...
The 1996 Summer Olympics, formally known as the Games of the XXVI Olympiad and informally known as the Centennial Olympics, were held in 1996 in Atlanta, United States. ...
Sparta Rotterdam is the oldest professional football team in the Netherlands, established on April 1, 1888. ...
The Eredivisie (English: Honorary Division) is the highest football league in the Netherlands. ...
Following this, Gravina announced the team was to sign a Nigerian player from Leicester City F.C. of the FA Premier League named Robert Ponnick. Being the first Premiership player to play in Serie B, the press crowded his debut in an exhibition match. The match was a disaster, with Ponnick showing almost no sense of understanding football and getting into a fight with one of his team-mates. At the end, it was revealed that the opposing team was an acting troupe and he was one of its members. The whole charade had been cooked up by Gravina in order to generate publicity. As might be expected, it worked, but all of the press was sharply negative. Leicester City Football Club, (also known as The Foxes) are an English professional football club based in the city of Leicester. ...
For the Scottish equivalent see Scottish Premier League The FA Premier League (often referred to as the Barclays Premiership in England and the Barclays English Premier League or just simply The EPL internationally) is a league competition for football clubs located at the top of the English football league system...
Throughout the turmoil, the team was near the bottom of the standings, and only monumental performances by goalkeeper Massimo Lotti as well as critical goals by Claudio Bonomi and Gionatha Spinesi (obtained on loan from Inter Milan) kept them from falling to the bottom. In the second-to-last game, they scored a 2–1 victory over Pescara to keep from being relegated, and the miracle continued. A football goalkeeper leaves the ground to parry a shot on goal In many team sports, a goalkeeper (termed goaltender, netminder, goalie, or keeper in some sports) is a designated player that is charged with directly preventing the opposite team from scoring by defending the goal. ...
Gionatha Spinesi (born 9 March 1978 in Pisa) is an Italian footballer currently playing as striker for Serie A team Calcio Catania. ...
Internazionale Milano Football Club is an Italian football club based in Milan, Lombardy, which plays in the Serie A. It is more commonly known as Inter, and often named Inter Milan in foreign countries. ...
1997/98 season and on Their second year in Serie B did not go nearly as well. Many players were sold or left through other means, and Jaconi was fired midway through the season. Their demotion that year was their first in any league since 1983.
The first year back in Serie C1, however, saw some success in the 1999 Coppa Italia, where they were able to defeat Serie A teams Perugia and Salernitana before losing to Inter Milan in the quarterfinals. The Coppa Italia Trophy - Coppa in Italian meaning Cup representing the Tournaments title. ...
A.C. Perugia is a football club based in Perugia, Italy. ...
Salernitana Sport is a football club based in Salerno, Italy. ...
Since then, they have not done nearly as well, falling back down to Serie C2 and then being cancelled from Italian football in 2005. Out of its ashes a new club was formed, called Pro Castel Di Sangro. They now play in a Regional Division. 2005 (MMV) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...
Both Bonomi and Spinesi eventually made their way to Serie A teams, and Bonomi was the first ex-Castel di Sangro player to score in Serie A.
Quest for promotion In the 2005-2006 Promozione season, Pro Castel di Sangro battled for promotion from beginning to end. After a long, hard fought season, the club fell short of promotion by three points (73) to Canistro (76). In 2006-07, Pro Castel di Sangro clearly won the league with a 11-points advantage to the second-placed team[3], moving up the ranks of Italian football to Eccellenza for the next season. Promozione is the name of a level of football in Italy. ...
Eccellenza (Italian for excellence) is the sixth level of Italian football (soccer). ...
Former players Carlo Cudicini (born September 6, 1973 in Milan) is an Italian football (soccer) goalkeeper. ...
Chelsea Football Club (also known as The Blues or previously The Pensioners) are an English professional football club based in west London. ...
Vincenzo Iaquinta, Cavaliere Ufficiale OMRI[1][2], (born November 21, 1979 in Cutro, Crotone) is an Italian World Cup-winning footballer , who currently plays for Udinese of Serie A. As many Calabrians in the 1980s his parents emigrated to Emilia-Romagna, in Northern Italy, because of better job opportunities. ...
Juventus Football Club (Latin for Youth, pronounced yoo-VEHN-toos) is one of Italys oldest and most successful football clubs, based in Turin. ...
Gionatha Spinesi (born 9 March 1978 in Pisa) is an Italian footballer currently playing as striker for Serie A team Calcio Catania. ...
Calcio Catania is an Italian football club founded in 1908 and are based in Catania, Sicily. ...
Further reading - The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro by Joe McGinness
References - ^ ISBN 0-316-55736-6
- ^ http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castel_di_Sangro_Calcio
- ^ [1]
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