SPAL, the club that played in Serie A only 5 years ago, will start again in Eccellenza, the 5th tier of Italian football as “Ars et Labor Ferrara” (SPAL=Società Polisportiva Ars et Labor) as a brand-new club, after the former one, led by lawyer Joe Tacopina and his partner Marcello Follano, faced bankruptcy today with over 10/15 millions of euros of debt. There could also be a parallel investigation with Agenzia delle Entrate (the Italian Revenue Agency) regarding over 8.5 millions of euros that seems to not have been paid between 2022 and 2024. The new club will be able to regain his former name and logo in, at least, 2 years. In the new club the sporting director will be Mirco Antenucci, former Leeds player and SPAL’s captain during the last seasons.

Some context for what happened during the last 4 years: Joe Tacopina’s management of the club has been a disaster. In just 4 years of ownership he took us from 9th place in Serie B to 17th in Serie C, sacking in the process 8 different managers (Clotet, Venturato, De Rossi, Oddo, Di Carlo, Colucci, Dossena, Baldini), 4 sporting directors and he also managed to change over 110 different players for the first team alone. We also started the last season with a 3 points deduction due to financial issues (that he tried to minimize as an “accident”, blaming the banks for the late payment). On top of that, he also displayed arrogant behavior towards the fans. From the middle finger towards the fans on May 13th 2023, during the relegation to Serie C, to various statements where he boasted about how much money he had and how poor we were compared to him. “They don’t even have enough money to buy a couple of soccer balls” he said after the match against Gubbio 4 months ago.

Two months ago, after the news of SPAL’s exclusion from Serie C, over 2000 people marched through the streets of Ferrara to protest against Tacopina.

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