Chievo Verona: A Modern Day Miracle

Date: 30th April 2012 at 8:45am
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Serie A today is filled with extravagant wages, lucrative sponsorship deals, and some of the biggest names in football.

It is tough to survive unless you are one of the top teams. Milan striker Zlatan Ibrahimovic is reportedly earning a tidy €9million per season.

Juventus have reputedly spent €100m this year alone on wages for their high-profile stars.

So how do Chievo Verona manage to survive amongst the big boys consistently in a league where money has attempted to dilute the competition? It truly is nothing short of a modern day miracle.

A club who spend less on their entire team’s wages than the likes of Edinson Cavani or Francesco Totti earn in one year should not be able to defy the critics and the bigger sides year after year as they have done.

They currently sit in 12th place but just three points separate them from Catania in 8th (an exceptional achievement) who have received many plaudits, and rightly so, for an outstanding season but we should be discussing Chievo in the same breath.

How the Gialloblu manage to do this is admirable and their never-say-die attitude, team spirit, fearlessness no matter who they come up against and, this season particularly, fine flowing football have endeared them to the peninsula and many in Italy have took them to their hearts as their ‘second’ team.

You really have to stop for a moment and consider just how big an achievement it is for a team from a suburb in the city of Verona which is more famous for its colosseum and the Shakespearean characters who leaned from its balconies to compete at such a high level.

Not just that, but the team hail from the Chievo district of the city which is home to under 3,000 inhabitants which adds further lustre to the fairytale of the team who have truly earned the nickname the Flying Donkeys.

For a time in their first season ever in the top league ten years ago they stunned the nation when, as instant favourites for the drop, but played some of the best football in the league that year with a midfield who often controlled games against ‘better’ sides with their sheer commitment and effort but displayed a technical prowess that few in the division thought they possessed.

They led the league in the first half of their maiden season in Serie A for six successive weeks and that should have been the first lesson to everyone that you should not write this team off. Sadly, critics have done so ever since and have roundly been proven wrong time and again.

That team, in their first ever campaign tasting top flight football, ended the season in an unbelievable 5th place under the guidance of Luigi Del Neri and as a result played UEFA Cup football the following year although were unlucky to draw continental veterans Red Star Belgrade in the opening round.

One thing that was a staple of Chievo then and has remained so today is the fact that there were no big stars or egos in the Bentegodi dressing room and this was a team who had.,despite all the adversity of the modern professional game, managed to retain the principles and values that all players start out with playing football.

They knew they were a team and that they won and lost as a team and this unity and unique friendship that existed within the squad obviously achieved results. It sent out a clear message to the rest of the league that they can spend as much money as they wanted but sometimes an outstanding team ethic could get results.

They may have had future World Cup winner Simone Perotta in their ranks and today boast a fine goalscorer in the side in Sergio Pellissier but these are not huge household names outside of the Italian football world.

Today the team boasts some of the most underrated players in the league who are sure to feature on more than a few Team of the Season having enjoyed fine seasons for Domenico Di Carlo’s side.

Davide Moscardelli, Stefano Sorrentino and Michael Bradley have been just some of the many players who have contributed to this season’s continued adaptation of the fairytale.

Although when discussing this club it almost seems unfair to single many players out due to the team spirit they show because even if you were to take these kind of players out they would still manage to survive and in style too.

Don’t dare say they would not. Chievo Verona’s entire recent history has been based on proving the doubters wrong and playing some stunning football while they do it.

So, feel free to write them off once again. It will only mean that the donkeys will fly higher than ever.

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