Bologna Club Focus: Down With A Whimper

Date: 13th May 2014 at 4:01pm
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And so it ended, this horrible, stagnant, dissatifying season, with a meek submission at home to Catania. There may be repercussions, internal enquiries, and protests at Casteldebole, but in all honesty, the Rossoblu had spent a season labouring to prove that they were more than the third worst team in the league and yet, the evidence says they may be less.

The writing on the wall was worthy of Banksy himself, a great mural protesting that not only did Davide Ballardini’s side have no place in Serie A, but that weren’t even honouring the division they were in with competition.

That a training game in the week before the game against Catania, designed to bolster the confidence of an entirely impotent frontline could be met with wry humour, but to have the weakness exposed quite so shockingly was still raw and painful.

That the Felsinei’s goal came from a left-back, Archimede Morleo, only adds a little to the gallows humour of the last few weeks. The facts are simple. With only five wins this season, Bologna have recorded the fewest. With only 28 goals, they have recorded the fewest.

The balloons blown up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Scudetto triumph are now flat, the last puffs of breath blowing out of them with Gonzalo Bergessio’s late winner on Sunday afternoon. There can be no complaints.

The squad, perhaps, is not to blame in entirety. Under both Pioli and Ballardini, they have displayed obvious short comings and equally tried to maximise the few positives they have had in order to stay within Serie A.

Even the two coaches, despite the endless tinkering attempting to shore up a porous defence while igniting something, anything, going forward, can be forgiven. It is a bad craftsman that blames his tools, but any coach in the world would struggle with those players who wore red and blue this season.

The blame really has to lie with those who allowed the squad to reach that point. It has been akin to watching a child play with his Sunday dinner, forever pushing the tasty morsels around the plate with his less favoured offerings, and eventually removing all the meaty bits, all the flavoursome bits, until he is left with a plate full of cabbage. That plate of cabbage fell at home to Catania on Sunday afternoon, and the leftovers will be scraped into Serie B’s compost heap.

In some ways, Sunday’s game was illustrative of how the Rossoblu season has panned out. Often they have had more shots than their opponents, yet seldom done anything to enforce that superiority. That flaw was evident against the Elefanti, as they amassed 29 shots between the fourteen involved Veltri, yet only 3 on target.

Lazarus was, again, the standout performer, but his cameo spots, 7 shots (1 on target) never looked to be anything like enough to lift his side to the three points. He will not struggle for suitors, nor will his Greek team-mate Panagiotis Kone, two quality players in  team of the distinctly average and below.

Serie A will not mourn Bologna, and nor should it. A season spent grimly clinging to a semblance of progression meant most Rossoblu games were horrible to watch, and with no change of that ending soon. Sassuolo, the thrilling upstarts, stole the nation’s hearts with their attacking approach. They earned safety that way too. If you don’t try, you never know, and the Felsinei were built around not finding out.

The squad that remains has some old stagers who may find work again, but also some names that it is difficult to see back in Serie A any time soon. Rolando Bianchi, for example, might not have completely lost his lustre, but his fellow ‘striker’, Robert Acquafresca is almost indelibly tainted goods. There are similar divisions in defence and midfield.

For the rest, it will be a hard summer. They may have earned their relegation with a week to spare, but the game at Lazio next week will allow a final look at a side who saw demotion coming over the horizon and grabbed it with both hands.

It has been a long, arduous season, and one that started with the club paying tributes to the 1963/64 Bologna side with their names stitched into their collar. That side are just a memory now; a story to tell eager grandchildren in Bolognese households.

Their counterparts 50 years hence, told an entirely different tale. Their names will not ring out with glory, their achievements not glisten in the sun. They are the Bologna who were relegated. They were the Bologna who deserved to be. They are the forgotten.

 

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