CASH-STRAPPED PARMA are set to sell the lockers and benches from their changing rooms in a desperate bid to raise funds as the club fights to stay afloat.
The Serie A strugglers were recently sold for €1 twice in a two month period, with debts in excess of €100 million threatening to put the club out of business completely.
They were even forced to postpone last Sunday’s top-flight fixture with Udinese due to their inability to cover the cost of stewarding, while nobody on their staff has been paid for seven months.
Now they have taken to selling off whatever assets they have available, with the site of judicial sales in Parma publishing photographs of the changing room lockers and benches, which are set to go under the hammer with a base price of €2,000 on Thursday, March 5.
First-team players promising to drive themselves to their away clash with Genoa on Sunday in order to save the club costs, but president Giampietro Manenti continues to look for way to raise cash so that the remainder of their Serie A calendar can be fulfilled.
“The next game will be played as normal, then we will see when we can reschedule the Udinese fixture,” Manenti told La Gazzetta dello Sport.
Club captain Alessandro Lucarelli this week hit out at the broken promises of successive boards of directors, but the president is keen to look to whatever future Parma have ahead of them.
“The players’ point of view has been expressed on television in recent days, but now we go forward,” he added.
“After due diligence, we have clear figures in hand. We await a meeting with the prosecutor so that we can be clear on how we proceed.”
Thats the most depressing thing ive ever heard
I always wonder where are UEFA when stories like this happen? Platini seems to care so much about how much City and Madrid etc spend each year but doesn’t give a sh*t when this happens. And it’s not just Parma, look at the likes of Hereford who went under because of debts of about 100k. All that money and financial expertise in UEFA and they do nothing to help save clubs. FFP has been a disaster anyway; now every club just uses backdoor accounts and ‘sponsorship deals’ to get around it.
Parma have close to 250 players in the 1st team and out on loan. Maybe that’s why they are having problems. It’s just a footballer farm.