Last summer, Australian businessman with Sicilian roots Ross Pelligra decided to breathe new life into one of the island’s oldest teams. True, the club had to be revived under a conditionally new name. On July 13, 2022 Catania SSD was incorporated. The team also updated the emblem, but its main element, the elephant, remained in place, although it turned black. This is a reference to the source of volcanic basalt in the center of Catania, a city that lives at the foot of an active volcano.
Pelligra immediately made it clear that he was determined and that his goal was to return the ‘red and blue’ to Serie A. So it’s up to the little ones, so that financial opportunities do not run out and local mafia clans do not interfere with the businessman . plans, as happened with the previous owners of Catania. “Cosa Nostra” and “Ndrangheta” are not stories from a movie or from the past, for the region they continue to be realities of today.
The Sicilian club from the city of the same name spent most of its difficult life dusting off in the lower divisions of Italian football. But there were also promotions to the elite, which, however, usually ended in financial scandals and demotion. The last and loudest failure of Catania’s management occurred in 2015, when, after seven wonderful years in Serie A, the “elephants” were transferred to the third strongest division, Serie C. Antonino Pulvirenti, who led the club at the time, he was taken by the hand in organizing contract matches and convicted of having ties to the mafia. The president of the ‘rojiazules’ offered the opponents 100,000 euros for the transfer of parties, which he admitted. The scandal was so strong that even the general secretary of UEFA, Gianni Infantino, had to intervene. As a result, Pulvirenti received six years in prison, multi-million dollar fines, and five years of disqualification from any activity related to sports. But a year later, the businessman was released on parole, and a few years later he led the local women’s basketball team.
Photo source: FC Catania
But for “Catania” this story turned into a real disaster. The team, which once claimed European competition, received a debt of 15 million euros as a parting gift from the condemned owner and the impossibility of restructuring it. After a few seasons, attempts to break again from the tight embrace of the lower divisions, having increased the debt to 56 million euros, the club declared bankruptcy. But only five years before these events, the “elephants” were alternately coached by people who are not the last for football like Sinisa Mihajlovic and Diego Simeone. For the Argentine as a coach, Catania was generally the first European club that, when Simeone was in it, turned from Italian to Argentine: 13 of El Cholo’s compatriots were in the Sicilian team. By the way, one of them, Maxi Lopez, was brought by the current coach of Atletico to Catania from Russia – the striker defended the colors of the Moscow football club in 2007-2009.
“Many of the ideas of my Atlético, courage, character, all this comes from Italy,” Simeone later admitted.
The main strength of Sicilian football has always been in its fans. The island’s three main clubs – Palermo, Messina and Catania – look back on different eras, but the teams have never been without the support of their fans. Even when the Elephants fell to the minor leagues or lost their professional status, starting anew in the same basement of Italian soccer, the good old Angelo Massimino Stadium, built in 1937, was never empty. And now Catania is experiencing a renaissance, not only thanks to the financial possibilities of its new owner, but also because the city’s love for its long-suffering club never ends. Otherwise, how else can you explain a strong start to the new season, first place in the standings, a 23-point lead over the closest pursuer and a higher-ranked Series place secured 6 days before the end of the season? ? It seems that the Red-Blues are really in the mood to return to the elite of Italian football.
